A view on health and poverty from the 74126

Health Care in the U.S. in the 21^st Century:

Inspiring Innovations that Disrupt The Status Quo---

A Response and View From the 74126

Ron Robinson

(Photo above, taken in our community gardenpark and orchard we are creating here; for the purposes of this post, it is a photo of a physician delivering innovative health care here in the 74126)

Some bottom lines about health and the U.S.: What contributes to making a real difference in the health of people in our nation?
 51 percent of health comes from lifestyle choices,
 20 percent from genetics, 
19 percent from the environment,
and only 10 percent from the health care delivery system (data from the presentation mentioned below)

And yet, of course, what is spent to effect change in health care in those areas is not anywhere near proportionate to what in fact makes the difference. We are stuck in an institutional, attractional model, that is maintanence rather than mission based. But, there are seeds of new endeavors underway to try to re-orient us (connected issue but also separate from this are the issues of the health care insurance and coverage of uninsured in our country; won’t get into that here; but if Governor Fallin is serious about looking beyond the box and trying innovative local plans to improve health outcomes that do not involve insurance coverage, then she should pay attention to what is said here and what is going on in these new seedbeds of innovation). Of course, good things are happening and health is being improved through the current institutions, but it is out of whack when it comes to comparing outcomes and costs.

This conversation stems from being privileged to attend a presentation at OU Tulsa yesterday that looked at some key aspects of our health care situation in the United States, particularly regarding the inability to see changes to our life expectancy especially when connected with the costs of care, and that mapped out some of the steps being taken to try to step away from the current system. This is especially important here as we live and have our community renewal efforts in the 74126 zip code, one of the ones with the lowest life expectancy in the Tulsa region, some 14 years lower than in midtown Tulsa just a few miles south of the 74126. Plus, we at the A Third Place Community Foundation have been working on these issues since our founding in 2009, with our mission of growing healthy lives and neighborhoods in our area (note the connection we make between the health of the two, people’s lives and their neighborhoods; can’t separate them).

This took on critical function when we hosted an OU Community Health Clinic, which was closed in winter 2011, and as we sought ways to replace clinic-based health care with ways that were “disruptively innovative” to the status quo and the system that perpetuates it, partnering in research and focus groups in our community toward a lay community health worker proposal, where the community worker lives in the neighborhood targeted for better health outcomes.  And my interest in these issues has been personal since I used to work with the OU Health Sciences Center years ago, and my wife is a graduate of OU Medical School and one of the few physicians (maybe the only one, we don’t know) who lives in the 74126. Health concerns underlie our major projects in our community foundation through the creation of the community garden and orchard and the community center. It is also why we are working with the Tulsa Health Department and its new Wellness Center in our area that opened its doors after our clinic closed, as well as with McLain High School and the healty living grant and the Taste of North Tulsa event; our food pantry with our weekly nutrition class and other programs is better named The Health Hub, and just about every program and partner we work with is directly connected to community health in the 74126 and other zips in our service area north of 46^th St. Our latest project to get a senior citizens program and center going in our area is also at heart health related. People in community live longer and more abundantly, and in doing so, give back to the community itself. 

Before I get into my take-aways from today’s presentation, and what my response and questions would have been to the inspiring presenters, here is what I have written about these issues, often, during the past eight years we have lived in the 74126. Here is a link to a few of the earlier works about some of our projects and the lay community health worker proposal in particular; you might want to check them out for further reflection after reading this one:

The powerpoint presentation on community health workers, which I had not posted before: http://www.scribd.com/doc/124103581/Community-Health-Workers

Blogposts on health care in our area and projects we have been involved with:

http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2011/05/radical-health-care-change-for-poor.html

and the related http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2010/08/disruptive-innovation-for-real.html.

Also the lecture I gave at OU in Norman that looked at our area in a comprehensive way and what we were doing at the time collaboratively to make a difference: http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/10/ou-lecture-pragmatics-of-collaboration.html

Now on to the most recent conversation at OU yesterday…

1.      They didn’t use the precise term but I liked that in essence they, physicians and health care and economics leaders who had gone through a Masters program at Dartmouth, were talking about the need to expand the bandwidth of how health care is delivered. That is in itself a good way to look at how to make the changes necessary, which often seem clear but too major to be undertaken. The community health care worker plan they later mentioned, as one of the small steps needed, is just one of the places for this expanded way of delivering health care. I am going to talk below about an even more radical, and basic, but simpler way as well.

2.      In looking at the differences in different communities about how care is delivered and where, such as what percent die in hospitals, in hospices, in nursing homes, in their own homes, or elsewhere, one of the things not addressed directly yesterday and that leaped out to me that I would have loved to go more in depth about was about how hard it is to track the outcomes of health in a community that, like ours, is poor and underserved and with low life expectancy, hard to track and hard to design plans for because of the high mobility and turnover of the people in the community, and the diversity even within us. We have some who have lived in this zip code all their lives, and some who only will for a month, and the percentages of those is growing more equal, meaning the community is becoming less stable.

 Related to this is that very important truth that there are big differences in values and approaches and “class” perspectives among the very residents here, and these are big determinants on how residents trust, or not, the health care system now in place, and what they think of regarding their own health options and their willingness or reluctance to go to a doctor for what is generally considered preventive care or primary care, even if they, for example, lived next door to a 24/7 facility; there are differences if it is a walk-in anytime clinic as opposed to one where you have to make an appointment first, an act itself that is viewed as a barrier and difficulty for some. We have here differences of those who grew up middle class with its values and even though they are now poor, and perhaps new to the area, still have middle class attitudes toward themselves and their options; we have those who are multi-generationally in poverty who have different stances and responses; and we have those who are or were working class and who have assets that are above poverty line. So, any health care approach that considers people to be representative, even among their own neighborhood, will end up misconnecting; treatment for someone will vary due to culture and geography and economic condition, and will vary in a zipcode like ours as well. So, the bottom line here is that health care professionals, and planners, need to really, really know an area they want to make a difference in. more on what that entails below.

3.      One of the best questions that the presenters raised, in light of the points made immediately before this, is how do different people answer the question of “what does it mean to be healthy?” That is going to vary widely. It is something we need to ask more often here on the ground in the community as well. What I have noticed is that it will be a different response than what will be given by someone not in poverty: for me, for example, when I answer that question I think about how being healthy allows me to live in advance, to make long range plans, to carry out goals for me and others around me, to keep a career; in essence, to be healthy is not to have to be thinking about whether I am healthy or not. For many of my neighbors when we talk about things like this, I can tell that it means, like so many things, being able to live subsistently day to day with the ability to enjoy a respite now and then and a small pleasure now and then or be around others for a good time; in essence, for the day to just be a little easier because so many things are naturally hard in it to accomplish, such as keeping a child in school, being able to go hunt for work, etc. Health care professionals need to know these differences and account for them.

4.      Where can health care happen? One of the needed shifts underway that was mentioned in the presentation is the need to move from “rescue care to health care.” (others were moving from fee-based service to risk-based contracting; and the development of the primary care patient-centered medical home and care coordination, and reducing variability). I thought of this move from rescue care, which we in the U.S. do well, to health care and thought of those percentages above about what really affects health care life expectancy outcomes, and I thought of how we need to de-institutionalize and de-centralize health care and move that ten percent into the 51 percent lifestyle change category. What I really thought about is how my wife, a physician, delivers health care to our neighbors when she meets them and talks with them at the community center, and especially while in the garden or orchard, at the community events; just building relationships with them, listening to them, and out of that relationship when suffering arises she is able to respond, be it with information, resources, advice, looking at a cut or rash or hurt leg, the same way a knowledgeable family member would in some places, or in some times; and just in helping to create healthier environments and lifestyle choices of healthier food and community she is involved in delivering real health care outcomes in this unhealthy area the same as when she sees someone from this area in her own practice located across town (at the VA). I will say that her patients in the clinic who do live in the 74126 seem to be better patients and taking care of themselves and trust her advice more and are more compliant, as they say, with followup actions once they find out where she lives, when they see her in the grocery store or at a community event. This is one of the ways that the future of health care is reclaiming a culture of health care from the past. The catchword now for it is cultural competency, knowing something about them in a wholistic way.
And it is important to note that health care is being delivered, in such a way, by many people here, and in our wider community, by people who do not have medical careers; it is very true that a lot of the health problems in our area are also caused by the spread of misinformation on health matters. The key is to unlock the strengths of community connections and trust, and build on them with a little training, and using right information to spread in the community (where word of mouth, and personal relationships are the currency). All of which is testament to why the community health workers, health coaches, lay advocates, whatever you want to call those who will be partners in health with those most in need and without anyone serving that function from their family or their community connections already, why they must be people who live in the area where those seeking care come from. 
It is also why, if I had been asked yesterday what I thought would make the most difference in health care from the medical school, I would answer with the simple but radical response: tell your graduates to move and live in areas of high poverty, add to the diversity of those neighborhoods, learn from them, make a difference in that 51 percent category even if you make your living still in that 10 percent category; you can do it and you can make it happen; we are proof of it. Also, give your employees in health care institutions bonuses, merit pay, for choosing to live in the areas where the patients with the least resources live, and where they can be a part of that informal, community grassroots health delivery. If health care, especially, is more of a calling, a vocation, and not just a profession, and certainly not just a job, then be open to the nature of a call. Talk about “disruptive innovation” and helping to shift the focus and locus of health care…or we can continue to tinker and plan and rearrange the chairs on the Titanic.
This is also why there is a connection between the health of the community and the health of the neighborhood schools, why we need to be ble to graduate students from McLain high school now who can and will go on to become nurses and doctors and other health professionals, the same as happened when my wife was a McLain graduate. To grow health in the 74126, make our schools in the area healthier and give them the resources and the curriculum offerings to produce graduates who will not be scared to remain or return to the area to live and work and be a part of that important community informal day to day life.

5.      I like that the folks at OU are looking at all this, and others are across the country; that they are committed to exploring small projects to try to seed change; that they are open to such questions as how many physicians should we be paying to educate if we don’t see major changes in health outcomes especially among our poorest, and I would say, if physicians and institutions continue to take the safe and convenient route with least change to “the way we have done it.” I think more physicians actually might be the key, especially as population grows, and as it becomes more diverse, and especially given the vast physician deserts like here in the 74126. The question has arisen for us, for example: why given the current health care system is it virtually impossible for my wife to open up a practice here in the 74126 where she so would like, or have liked, to do so, as she did on her own in Tahlequah, OK years ago when completing her residency in internal medicine and going to be the only M.D. internist there? Why, given the health problems here and low life expectancy here, is it the hardest to have an OU clinic, or a private medical clinic, here? Answering that unveils the realities of the situation. Making it easier to do so would seem to be part of the solution. The other part of the solution is to not be physician-focused, clinic-focused either (I love that we now in our zipcode have the new OSU physicians clinic in the new Health Dept. building opening up, but it is going to face the same set of cultural barriers, attitudes toward one’s self and one’s view of what health means). I like how OU, and I suppose OSU, and Morton with its new plan for health coaches, and the Health Dept with its commitment to our area are all beginning it seems to take some small steps in trying to figure this all out, and due to the necessity that just knowing what to do is but a small part of the problem, since funds are being cut, Medicaid coverage is being kept from expanding, and those lifestyle choices and environmental realities that mean so much to health are also not being funded. When you live on the same block, or go by everyday, rows of abandoned houses, burned out houses and buildings, and have no sidewalks, few street lights, no ability to exercise where you can get to easily and are not hassled by stray dogs, etc , and when you add to that the deep issues of substance abuse, addictions, mental health issues, learning disabilities, lack of resources for the high percentage of incarcerated people getting out and coming into our area, and we remember that axiom we began with, from our mission statement, that healthy lives require healthy neighborhoods, and healthy neighborhood schools, and civic and church groups, and those require healthy lives. As I have talked recently about school transformations, (and in my other hats, have talked about church transformations), what goes on outside of a health care office, in the home and neighborhood of the person seeking care, is more important to creating health than what even goes on inside the office in the 15 to 30 minute to at most hour together, or in the hospitals.

6.      My final takeaway was just a notion, a small detail, that arose when the conversation focused on the role of the internet and technology, and sharing information, etc. in the new world emerging for health care delivery. While they were talking in those big terms, all good and needed and helpful, I was thinking how we could really use a text message database that sent out news, reminders, tips, free from us and from health caregivers to all those who are poor and out of usual means of communication and contact and who will only attend health classes or lifestyle classes, etc. if mandated to be there. Most of our neighbors have now phones (as vital as horses once were here, and for many of the same reasons, to keep in touch and connected with others) and I would love to be able to build on that basic technological tool; there are so many ways that health-driven text messages, info, resources, all could affect their lives, a small but significant way. We need to try to build that into our system here from the ground up, but would be an interesting project to explore with others its application possibilities and ramifications.

It has been great having OU as one of our community health partners. Some of our board members are going out to OU today to meet with a class of graduate social work students doing service learning projects with us later this month too back in the 74126. Love to do the same with other groups. 

McLain High School: Take The Survey, Get Involved, Programs Coming Up, and My McLain Responses

We had the privilege of walking with McLain students in the Martin Luther King Parade this year. We are working with McLain not only in the School Foundation but also in its Smart Choices=Healthy Living grant. In February students will come to our community center for a program learning about food justice and helping us with our food pantry serving the McLain High and Sperry High district zipcodes, and in March they will come to our community gardenpark and orchard serving our neighborhoods for more learning and giving back to the community. It continues our partnership of the past few years, and reminds us we need to do more. So many great programs here; so many great students there.

The school needs community residents of the McLain district to respond to an online survey that is crucial as leaders work on recommendations for changes at the school. Go to this link for a quick survey: http://www.tulsaschools.org/2_News/01_PUBLIC_INFO/survey_McLain_Jan2013.asp

And here is my own personal response about McLain from the survey questions:

I am promoting the survey that Tulsa Public Schools is conducting for McLain High School in its pivotal study year, and so for transparency I thought I would post my own responses that just flowed as i filled out the survey. It is probably missing a lot, and there will be things I think of later I wish I had added, but this is what it is. Bottom line: A paradigm shift is needed in who we think a school is for, and Whose it is.  The mission of the school is not ultimately the education of particular individual students; instead the education of the particular individual students is the means to the broader end: the improvement of the community; this is why we build schools in the first place and place them where we do (and it is, btw, the biggest danger in the community-breaking model of for profit online schools that continue to separate students and families from their neighbors); the mission of the school is to impact and improve the community in which it lives and breathes and has its being, and to do that it educates that community's children, but the community matters and the community is intertwined mutually into the lifeblood of the mission of the school, and when that is severed, as it has historically been with McLain, and of course others but probably not to the extent as at McLain, then the school and the community suffers, and not just the beacon school, the high school, but in turn all the way down through the schools connected to it from the earlier years. 

So with that preamble, here is my response:

What are McLain High School’s  strengths?

Its committed faculty and staff, and the students who are overcoming tremendous challenges to grow into responsible adulthood and to learn how to give back to their community. Also its location in the heart of far north Tulsa, right on Peoria near several commercial areas and residential neighborhoods. And don't forget, its amazing alumni that bridge a vast array of ethnic backgrounds and who now are involved in many careers and professions and businesses. Also the untold story of how the school takes students reading at such a low level, for example, when they come in at, for example, 9th grade and by the time they graduate they have made up so much skills that they lacked before; if other schools had the same starting point, there would be more similarity in the outcomes, though other factors still would need to be worked on.

What are McLain High School’s challenges?

Lack of funding from the state. Lack of investment by TPS in a turnaround strategy that will give a core faculty and staff a ten year framework, modelling stability from the top instead of the merry go round of administrative changes over the past ten years or more. Lack of immediate surrounding community involvement in the school, and the school in the immediate surrounding community from which the students come. Schools do not exist in a vacuum but are there for the ultimate improvement not only of individual students but of the communities in which and for which they were created; communities and geographic neighborhoods matter; as the surrounding neighborhoods declined, in an historical mutuality with the decline of course offerings and resources for the school, it affected the school. We need to, instead of building up barriers between school and those who live around it, open up the doors and see the school as a community institution day and night serving the deep needs of the community for which it is the leading institution, the beacon still as it was in 1959 when it was begun. As above, if the feeder schools and students coming into the high school are not given top priority for funding in the district, and if the communities where the students live are not funded and re-grown, then the school will be on a treadmill or path of surviving instead of thriving because we are dealing with systemic issues, not issues related just to an educational institution. In sum, the challenges are mostly extrinsic to McLain and tinkering within McLain over the years only misdirects where the funding and resources and committments and risk-taking need to go.

What recommendations would you have for McLain High School?

In no particular order of importance:

1. Know the history of McLain, understand it, from day one to today; see the challenges it has always faced, hear the stories of alumni from all the years, and the faculty and the staff from 1959 on; discern what happened, growing from the evil of segregation in which it and others were founded even as late as 1959, to the early in its years first steps of integration, and its successes as well as challenges as it integrated rapidly and several years before Washington High did with its magnet program, and yet at the same time as it began to be integrated its course offerings for college prep began to dwindle, and with it, as well as the evil of white flight and the racist response to integration, fueled the real and imagined decline perspectives. Understand the many issues around the name change controversies, that still linger. See what happened to the school in direct correlation and causation with the important and needed Washington magnet program, and own the consequences of that action. Fully know the history face-on and how the history of the school and the history of the neighborhoods in its district are intertwined. You can’t change one without changing the other. It must be a holistic approach.

2, To make up for historic neglect, and to show the way for others: commit to a 10 year turnaround investment that rewards faculty and staff and get committments to stability. It takes leadership that is non-anxious, and that is connected to the surrounding community, that relates to alumni as well and the resources they can bring, to be able to weather the storms and change the culture of the system and to institute the other changes needed; if we keep creating new programs but having them be administered by new staff and leaders it is self-defeating. Good news is that with the 7-12 format, if space issues can ever be resolved and other problems with that experiement, that it gives you a good six years with a student in which culture change in a system can happen, with students and with their families.Even if 9-12 is kept, this culture change can happen with right leaders who come from the neighborhoods and from alumni and can connect with them, so that a bright student in our neighborhoods here will not automatically think, or their parents think, they must leave McLain or never attend there.

3. Drop the "Science and Technology" from the school name and way it is known and promoted. Other schools even if they might have an appendage like that are known still as "Webster High or Memorial High or etc etc" and by adding science and technology, as well intentioned as it might have been for pushing a so-called magnet program that focused on future job requirements, it sends a signal that it is a glorified vo-tech, that it is like the old "Manual" schools of segregated era. Let it once again simply be McLain High School; those who dream of college prep for their students will not feel they need to send their kids out of the district.

4. Cut back, way back, across the district on the ability to go out of the neighborhood to attend public school; connect the neighborhoods back to the schools; when students in a neighborhood go to ten different educational venues instead of a common one, then it hinders the community connections that hurt the area and which we have seen directly hurt the schools in those communities. This will always be an issue in our new era, but we can reduce its effects.

5. Relocate some high academic programs to McLain similar to what was/is used to attract to Washington; like many urban districts across the country TPS has especially at McLain virtually become resegregated; we need to have "disruptive innovation" here as we did once at Washington. How about some super summer program that will bring in the best minds from across the district.

6. Use Monroe School again, (or Cherokee also on North peoria nearby) which were both built for junior high, for the 7th and 8th grades, which frees up space at McLain High school for creating a Center for Community Learning; turn McLain not just into a high school but also educate those families of the high school students, and their neighbors; use the Center or the school as a Non-profit resource center in the midst of the classes, relocating services to the school instead of trying to get the students to get their families to take them to the health and other services and programs for enrichment elsewhere. See the building use ratio of space to students as an opportunity to bring in the community and improve the community right around the school. Or a Center For Racial Justice, or Understanding Poverty, something that will make McLain stand out on a national scale.

7. Get the alumni from every decade intimately involved in the turnaround.

Other comments:

This is vital. Ask OU Tulsa Medical school for example and they will say that the best way to meet the physician shortage in north tulsa is to get medical students who have come from north tulsa themselves; the same goes for principals; and yet is McLain capable now of still producing graduates who go on to become physicians, or principals, etc? If it is not capable of doing this, then all the rest that others try to do for our area will hit a brick wall because it takes people from an area to best relate with it and to have the passion and committment to return and stay and work for the community. The medical schools and other institutions are now, belatedly, committing to helping direct their graduates back into our community, if they can find the students who will do so; we have to do our part to help in the high school to prepare our students, our children, so they can become those leaders. This seems like an outlandish dream to people outside our area who think nothing such can come from our area and our kids, and too often we buy into that as well, and too often with our funding choices and other decisions we further that notion; but we have to break out of it.

The area around McLain will continue to change; we will see some increasing "white" increase in some of the areas in the McLain district, as well as growing hispanic presence. Maybe a Center for Reconciliation, connected to the John Hope Franklin Center, perhaps an offshoot or housing it at the school, to help students and the neighborhoods to learn better to live in the new multi ethnic culture fast approaching; team with YWCA to work with all students, white,brown, black, to understand and be able to become leaders themselves of the dialogue on race and class. turn what others see as a weakness and challenge into a strength. sometimes our students can be better teachers about issues of class and poverty and related issues than anyone else, if given the chance and space, and that kind of turning loose their inherent strengths can give them confidence to develop others. What do they already know that other students in Tulsa don't? Build on those. Their survival skills are amazing and they someone to point these out and nurture them and put them into use teaching others; from that will come miracles. 

Wade in the Waters: Connecting with Beloved Community Here in 2013

Wade in the Waters of 2013: A Place For You Here in Beloved Community

Special note: Community Breakfast Saturday, Jan. 12, from 8 to 10 am at the Odd Fellows Lodge, 6227 N. Quincy Ave., $5 all you care to eat. Support this group that supports our community.

Special Thanks: To Tulsa Community Foundation, the Anita Hill Foundation, Community of Hope, Elks Lodge for recent donations, and to our generous individuals who support us with monthly gifts and with special project gifts; we continue to be volunteer based and in need of more grant and individual support (when i hear the numbers tossed around in local state and federal debates about monies spent, and think what we could do with such an infitesmial portion of that, and what we do with what is given, it astounds me still) but we are immensely grateful for recent gifts and look forward to the new year of surprising the world of scarcity here due to the surprises we will receive from you and yours.

Introduction

One of the biblical stories being lifted up this Sunday during the Epiphany and new year Season in churches across many denominations is the story of Jesus being baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptizer. John had formed a community of radical forgiveness out in the wilderness away from the places and people of power. Jesus, in coming to John, and stepping into the symbol-rich waters of liberation connects with, and later challenges, John’s community, and the spirit of God then blesses and names Jesus as Beloved, signaling the beginning of his own missional ministry of blessing the outcast and sharing God’s naming of Beloved with those without name and standing in the society.

It begins with going into the water, seeking community, discovering your deepest sense of Whose you are, being refreshed in the Spirit and then going forth into service.

Last Sunday at our 10^th Anniversary Celebration here, we paused and were refreshed with the presence of one another, and our neighbors here, and visitors who came to celebrate with us in worship, in meal, and in companionship, getting to know more of our journey these past ten years. We celebrate the past in order to let it become the past, learning from it in order to keep wading into the waters of life and renewal around us, expanding the Beloved Community to all the places and people who touch us and whom we touch.

Take Your Step Into The Water With Us…

Here below are some of the ways we are still stepping into the waters, responding to the call of community based on radical forgiveness and justice for all, and inviting others to experience the sense and spirit of the Beloved Presence that presents itself to us as a gift continually. We will be sharing hopes and plans and ways that we can be and become more community even as we practice and point toward it now. Baptism is a sign of something new, and yet a sign of something everlasting at the same time; in this vein, as a community on this particular Sunday celebration of the baptism of Jesus, how do and can we show evidence of our communal baptism, of our newness, of our being Beloved, of our renewal to share with others?

1. Our Food Community. We are moving toward creating a new space at the Community Center, 5920 N. Owasso Ave. that will allow us to better embody our different approach to providing food for the hungry, one that does not treat people as clients at a service agency, but as brothers and sisters in the neighborhood. We are working on expanding the pantry into more of an old-fashioned style Neighborhood Corner Pantry where people shop from shelves and our freezers as if they were in a store where the food had to be purchased. We will be painting new space for it, and moving into it. This will free up one room for a much needed downstairs small more private meeting room. Part of our Food Community is also the GardenKitchenPark and Orchard, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave., from which some of our food comes, and now we are hoping to move forward with plans for creating more welcome there by putting in wheelchair accessible paths to some of our garden beds, and more accessible beds. It is one of the winter-time hardscape projects we would like to accomplish with your help, especially bearing in mind the people who ride on their motorized scooters past the park on their way from homes to the grocery store on North Peoria and back up the hill past us to their homes again. Helping them grow their own food and to give away, all in community, is important.

On Friday, Jan. 25 from 11 am to Noon at the Center we will be expanding our food outreach to many more hungry families who haven’t been aware of us, through our mobile van food giveaway; this time we are reaching out through nearby schools to identify the families in need whom we will give vouchers for the event to come get some 60-80 pounds of food. We are hopeful we can do this throughout the year again, targeting different schools and their families as a way to make them aware of us and to get them into our ongoing regular food community where we have our nutritional consultant and other programs and connect them with our garden and events. If you are in a school in our 74126 74130 and 74073 area and would like to participate sometime this year with us please let me know.

2. Our Center Community. We are working on being a more hospitable place in the midst of much scarcity by improving our own restrooms, and our GardenArt Room, and our emerging Crafts and Sewing Coop Room, and by installing washer and dryer for those in need, especially in light of the closing of our community’s closest laundramat, the one we used to have our Center next to. We have recently expanded lighting on the outside of our Center, some for security but also so it will be able to be used more often especially when the inside of the building is not open. We are looking at ways to create a public access Little Free Library outside at the Center, part of a nationwide movement for those (see www.littlefreelibrary.org) and also put them out in the community, at the gardenpark and along the bike trail and with partner businesses and O’Brien Park, etc. wherever people go by, and perhaps also at the center a small Giveaway Food Spot on the outside of the building (imagine being able to get some fruit or small items without having to go inside, trying to catch us open; a way of expressing radical abundance and hospitality especially to those who might be homeless). And to create some sit down spaces in our courtyards outside the building, where our free wifi can be accessed as well. The more we claim our own grounds, by offering to give the grounds away to others, the more we show that our area is not one being neglected, and so we invite the care of others and not the neglect or destruction of others. As part of our 2013 Center Renovation we are also expanding and creating a better Clothing and Items Giveaway Store in our South Building which begins our use of it for the public and not just for storage of items we are selling to raise funds. Gradually as we can we will fix up and expand more into that largest of all our spaces. We are also hoping someone will take the lead on bringing back our monthly or making it a weekly Game Night at the Center. And help plan trips together for our area residents. Finally in our Center Community we have need of helpers to work with us on the old parsonage to secure it for its transformation and uses too. We worry about it because due to its openness and past neglect; it is like so many of our structures in the neighborhood here around us that have recently been set on fire. With a little focused attention it can continue to be changed into some kind of place of use and beauty.

We are again blessed to partner with OU Graduate Social Work students this semester to help us in many of these areas above, and connect the wisdom of our residents with their service learning needs. We hope to connect with many other universities and programs, public and private and seminaries; just about every degree program could find a way to connect student projects with our area.

3. Again this year we will take the values of our group and our projects and put them on parade…the Monday, Jan. 21 Martin Luther King, Jr. parade to be precise, and this year we will be joined in the parade with our partners, the McLain High School students and the project we are working on with them called Healthy Living=Smart Choices. Come walk with us as we honor Dr. King and highlight our partnerships. In February and in March we will host events for the students at the center and at the park in keeping with the goals of the project; more on those later, but if you would like to help us create those events let us know. Come meet the students and staff during the parade. We are also looking for a truck or a van for the parade as well that we can decorate and use. We will be doing parade planning during our common meal this Sunday at noon lunch.

4. Beyond our own properties and projects on them, we wade this year into the waters of our community of far north Tulsa and Turley. We need non profits who want to serve in our area who might carry out some of their programs or use office space in the closed Cherokee School; we are working on strategies to repurpose and put back into use our wonderful school building on North Peoria and in the process provide a win-win by purchasing it from the Tulsa School District to help their financial status which has suffered from the injustices on the state level that are trying to gut public education and in so doing fragment further our communities and our peoples. We are also this month organizing to start a much needed Senior Citizens Center in our area which we haven’t had since federal funding for it was eliminated several years ago; we are looking for people to help be on our steering committee and a new nonprofit board to run it. We are working and needing volunteers soon to help us help the Turley Area Volunteer Fire Dept conduct a campaign to become an independent Fire District which will both raise funds and improve services in our area, which has suffered from wildfires and arson so much, but also help reduce the cost on residences by sharing the costs more widely through property tax assessments for the district which will in almost all cases be lower in actual taxes than what the fire dept dues are now. We need people to help us market the campaign, raise funds for the campaign, and soon begin getting petition signatures. We talk and plan about many of these ventures at our monthly gatherings: First Thursdays at 3:30 pm at the community center, and on the Last Tuesdays, this month Jan. 29, at 6 pm for planning and then 7 pm for TownHall at O’Brien Park Center, 6147 N. Birmingham.

5. We continue to need help to get out the visuals and the message about all our unhealthy abandoned burned down buildings that remain open and accessible to kids and are an eyesore in our community, especially those on our major streets like Peoria Ave. it takes constant pressure on county and health dept officials to keep the pressure on property owners, many or most who don’t live in our area, to clean up the properties….We are working to try to improve our area and support existing businesses and welcome in new ones; also trying to help hold existing businesses accountable for environmental care of our community, and have been working with the Turley Community Association and county officials on issues related to the metal crusher. We also are hoping to highlight the need for more community neighborhood watch and better work with area law enforcement, and getting law enforcement to come meet with community residents and answer questions at the monthly Town Hall where the deputies haven’t been in months. Those residents who have suffered from recent rash of burglaries and other concerns are especially invited to the community center each last Thursday of the month at 6:30 pm to connect with the Turley Area Alliance Against Crime….And we hope to pick back up on our discussions about helping run the affordable housing project in our surrounding area, helping to keep houses from becoming abandoned, and therefore streets from becoming neglected, and thus being claimed by those who prey upon people and property most vulnerable.

6. I went to a public hearing this past week on plans for improving the bus system in Tulsa. My witness was both pro and con; first pro is that going to a rapid bus transit system is a great plan for both economic development and social justice, especially as it begins to make it easier for people to be on foot, and easier for people who are on foot to be able to get to jobs and health care and community events. It is one of the most important investments our wider community can make, even those who are privileged, so to speak, to not have to need mass transit even though many who can afford not to use it do want to have better options and incentives for using it; better for pocketbooks, better for the environment, better for personal health, better for building community connections. The con is that even though the system prioritizes the 105 Route which goes along North Peoria, from here in our community at 66^th St. N. south, the proposed plans for increasing the frequency of service would not extend to our far north, 46^th St. and north on Peoria, McLain High School service area and neighborhoods, new Health Department Wellness Center neighborhoods, here where we serve in a much abandoned area. This plan continues to offer little to nothing more than what is currently available to our local area residents, even though it is overall a good plan needed for the greater area. The plan’s new stations (four along South Peoria and only two along North Peoria) are not in our far north area, and would only begin by the Dept. of Human Services building at 38^th and North Peoria; the immense neighborhoods north of the divide geographically of the Flat Rock Creek Basin would have nothing new offered except if they are able to get to the new station at DHS they could if they desired get off their bus and wait for a rapid transit bus when it came; very little time incentive is aided. In one of the discarded plans there was floated an option to provide shuttle service throughout the McLain school and Turley neighborhoods that would take people to the proposed new station, but because of stated costs concerns it was dropped. There are geographic differences because of the Flat Rock Creek basin; those north of it are naturally cut off except by Peoria from the areas south of the creek basin, and it affects the identity and ability for walking south on Peoria. It is why the current 105 is so important and why its frequency needs to be increased; without the frequency increase and other improvements there is not the incentive to use it as often as it needs to be used, and people use that lack of use for a catch-22 of not making the moral imperative and economic incentive needed for our low income lowest life expectancy area.

Even at the truncanted service plan that doesn’t extend rapid service all the way along the line north, the plan is worthy of support and is running into opposition, and will more I suspect, from those with short-sighted economic lens, social justice lens, and those who equate poor people with criminals and don’t want poor people riding buses into their neighborhoods for work, or shopping or services that are not available where we live.

And even if it were to be approved as is currently it would still be three years before the plan was fully implemented. But, even so, it is worth it to keep learning, discussing, planning, dreaming, all for the way we can raise consciousness about these vital issues. For example, one recent conversation I had with an economic leader for poor communities about the issues of lack of transportation options and how it holds back the vulnerable led us to the idea of taking our radical health care from the ground up plan we had envisioned a few years ago with OU but never implemented, for neighborhood health advocates and connecters, and turning it into a neighborhood transportation plan, where you help pay gasoline and some car expenses for neighbors who will help drive neighbors to the places needed to go. That kind of personal jitney service, volunteer taxi type services, can be part of the broader picture, just as we need to concentrate on educating and equipping our residents and our area with better and safer bicycling options; though none of this is ever a replacement for the benefits of mass transit.

Let your voices be heard. Go learn more at www.incog.org and http://www.fastforwardplan.org/ and send your comments and ideas to kstjohn@incog.org. I think given the opposition they are already encountering because of the estimated costs of providing faster bus service to the poor that the plan should go in all the way and truly present a plan that serves the poor and helps increase economic incentives for areas to attract businesses and residents; if you are going to go down, go down big; you might be surprised; so put in at least one more rapid transit bus enhanced station on the northside, make it four on south Peoria and three on north Peoria at least, and have one of those stations be here in the heart of our business area at the grocery store at 62^nd and North Peoria, or at the least up near McLain High School perhaps at the current stop at the old McLain Shopping Center that is sorely in need of a boost. It is the right thing to do, and in the long run, perhaps the next generation, it will be the cost-effective thing to do, as any and all investment in the northside is and will be though it is invisible to our outward eyes.

Conclusion

So, These are the kinds of daily waters of mission we are wading in to so far this 2013; we experience such a feeling of Beloved Community when we do so, and invite you to experience it with us by connecting with us in one of these endeavors. Or sharing with others who might find inspiration in serving with us.

P.S. Our worshipping community gathers on Sunday for conversation, communion, common meal, and connections, from 10 am to 1 pm here at the community center

Thanks, blessings, and more soon,

Ron Robinson

www.turleyok.blogspot.com, www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com

The Christmas Message 2012: Many Kinds of Lights On The Far Northside

Hi all. You haven't received an email from us lately because of the busyness of the season here at A Third Place Community Foundation and the The Welcome Table missional community in the Turley and Far Northside area. But we have been grateful for your support, your partnerships, your connections, your helping to spread the word about our service and social justice actions here. We hope your own Christmas and holiday seasons have been as blessed, and if you like many have been struggling during these particular days we hope that simple gifts of peace and hope will come your way. Know that you are in our prayers.

I have been thinking of lights amid the darkness lately, and not just because that is a cliche of the seasons. Here in our area there are big swaths of North Peoria, as I have written about often, with no streetlights, no sidewalks, and no holiday decorations lighting up the businesses or public buildings along our busiest street. In fact, several months ago I attached photos of various abandoned unhealthy dangerous rundown and burned out buildings on North Peoria Ave when I sent out a letter from us, and those buildings remain as they are and have been, untouched, still eyesores right across from Cherokee School even as we try to attract groups to come relocate and repurpose the closed school with us. Whether it is utilities, banks, grocery stores, restaurants, salons, car salvages, I know of only one that has put up lights to show a little Christmas spirit to the community. It is part of what happens when people who run our businesses, etc. don't live here anymore, and that we don't have a group along this corridor to support and encourage one another, and the community association of residents, like so many of our barely getting by neighborhood associations in our area, are low on money and energy.

And yet, you know I am going to write "and yet..." I think of how our group has, in good Charlie Brown Christmas Tree style, put up decorations by the welcome sign to our area on North Peoria, including a tree this year; and how we have put up solar lights (so as not to have to use school electricity) on the community Christmas tree that is still by the memorial arch at Cherokee School even now two winters since the school is closed, lights that flash on and off and that cover just half of the tree, a sign of the barely hanging on life, but that still shines and reminds of its existence, and perhaps to some unknown child going down to the grocery store in the dark without sidewalks, or waiting for the bus nearby, it will at least bring some cheer; and how up on the hill just west of the Cherokee School we have started lighting up one corner of our Community KitchenGardenPark and Orchard, there where so much trash and burned out homes once stood amid the grass higher than the roof, like too many of our homes still in this area just out of sight and out of mind of most people in the Tulsa area. Just one little corner lighted this season, but it has inspired us to begin plans for next year when we will have a Garden of Lights for all in our area there, and weather permitting hold community events there during the season as people walk through the orchard and around the gardens and the new shed and enjoy the views and the lights. (if you would like to donate light decorations or can buy them at after Christmas sales, please do as we start our planning for this new venture of lights next year). And how we have put up our own few but meaningful lights at the community center for people passing by to enjoy, a reminder that we do have enough even though we don't have enough that we can still share a little generosity of spirit, of beauty.

Of course, these lights are just signs of the many other kinds of ways we have recently been illuminated ourselves by our neighbors, and how we help bring light into lives and neighborhoods. Here are a few below:

---Our food justice pantry continues to expand; we had a great mobile van food day at the center and gave out 5 tons of food; we continue to increase by 30 percent our outreach to those hungry in just our own three zipcodes we serve; we will have given out some 75 turkeys alone. We had great 125 or so people at our Christmas community meal and carols and gift giving when the kids were able to get about 5 gifts apiece. And our garden has been producing herbs and peppers almost right up to Christmas. In the new year we are going to be concentrating our Mobile Van Food Days to connecting with new residents of our area and those whom are in need but haven't been able to learn about or get to our pantry; we are going to target school families in our areas to receive our vouchers for the food on those special days when the Mobile Van comes, as a way to connect them with our ongoing resources. We will also be offering meals on those special days too. Our next one will be Friday, Jan. 25 from 10 am to noon followed by the meal.

--In fact at the same time for those whom we already serve with food and meals we are expanding the food pantry to add being open on the first Saturdays of each month, beginning Jan. 5, from 11 am to 1 pm besides our weekly hours. And we will couple the food days with the new Community Art Days, which is another way this season we have been bringing light of art into people's lives as well as helping them to make inexpensive and meaningful gifts to give.

---And we are working on service learning projects with both OU Graduate Social Work classes to give them experience understanding poverty and healthy responses to it, and will be working in the new year with McLain School on a new Smart Choices=Healthy Living grant to expose the students in our area to how they can help create healthier communities and set good patterns for their own lives for giving back and growing healthy.

---We continue to be involved in the kind of light-giving that doesn't show up as much, but that is cultivating the soil of the spirit and hope here in the 74126. We are working to help the volunteer fire department grow by becoming a Fire Board independent district; we are working still on abandoned buildings (see above) and on a Disaster Response Network; we are still trying to recruit and show groups the vision of what Cherokee School could become rather than just another large abandoned building attracting criminals in our area, or arsonists; we are after the first of the year beginning a steering committee to bring back a Turley Area Senior Citizens Center, one that had been abandoned years before when funds were cut; now there is no senior nutrition site available for miles and miles and they are often already full; on the other end of our hunger spectrum (and remember that in our area half of our population will soon be either over 60 or under 18, the most vulnerable population groups) we will be planning the return of our daily summer meal for all under 18, a program that we had no home for this past summer due to another school closure in our area. And we are still researching and hoping we can attract in the new year people who want to help us build relationships and affect lives through taking on low-income low rent homes in our area in the subdivisions where so many abandoned homes seem to dominate. And we want to help recruit volunteers to our partners for their projects, especially the inspiring ground breaking work being done at Sarah's Residential Living as they try to take more of these abandoned homes and transform them into intimate group living spaces for those in need here; and for the North Tulsa Farmers Market. We also want to continue enriching our partnership with the new Health Dept. wellness center nearby, using our experience and contacts to connect residents with the emerging care available there through the OSU Physicians clinic and the health dept programs.

---We are hopeful in the new year of getting grants to make the gardenpark into a community art space, but whether we get the grants or not, we will continue creating it as such, tapping into the gifts and lights of the people who live nearby and who are still finding out about the garden, and that it is for them, and that they can use it. There will be much growth at the park which was just dedicated this past summer, and we hope the Garden of Lights at the end of next year will be the culmination of how the park is a beacon of hope in the area throughout the year. Planting will be resuming in February by the way so plan now to bring teams to help.

---Some of our signature events have been the summer festival, the Halloween and Christmas meals and parties, where we connect with hundreds of our neighbors in a fun way and provide information and resources. We want to expand those community parties and find ways to take people on excursions around town or even as we recently helped to do to take a hike up on Turley Hill to find the legendary Runestone Rock. We will want to help expand and spread the word about our ongoing resources we have such as the clothing room, the computer center, and now with the closure of our community laundramat we need to hook up and make available at times our own washer and dryer; we are going to be getting more organized with a new Crafts Co-op and hope to have booths set up at farmers markets where our folks can have their items sold; we have our Auction items remaining to bring in needed money for our projects, and so if you can help sell them on craigslist or help us get them to a consignment auction somewhere let us know; And we have begun to improve some of the grounds around our Center and want to do more in the coming year to create a deck, and welcoming places where people can use our wifi and our space even when the building itself might not be open, and to help transform the neighborhood, so we have many building and construction projects on tap right on our own properties, even as we look to other properties as well.

---And finally I know I have missed out on some of the ways we brought light into our area this past year, with your help and with your donations to www.turleyok.blogspot.com, and I definitely know that there will be many new projects and undertakings and just simple small acts of justice done with great love that will emerge that I can not even imagine now, because they are in the imagination and inspiration of someone reading this, or someone whom we haven't even met yet, but who will find through us a way to put their gifts and passions into the crevices of a broken world here.

---For example, I am about to leave to go get things started for a special Free Christmas Store today for a few hours that just came up over the weekend as we got so many donations in of toys and turkeys, etc. that we needed to begin setting up a special time when people can just come and look and receive. It will be open from 2-4 pm today, but then our Food Pantry will be open on the day after Christmas too as we continue to help people share in the holiday, reminding them that Christmas begins, not ends, on Dec. 25. To find ways that on each of the 12 days of Christmas, the spirit of incarnating the Holy can be born even here in the burned out places, in the new Nazareths, in the mangers where the homeless and the addicted and the mentally ill and the learning disabled and the unemployed and the abused and the just released from prison felons and the sick, and those who refuse to leave them and live elsewhere, and those who love this area and its people and return to it, and those who are drawn here for some reason to be blessed by all here (as surely it is a blessing to have seen those lines of children at the christmas party we hosted, to receive their spirit that was much deeper and more beautiful than anything we could give them), that all of this can be born every day, even here, even now.

Thanks for your presence with us, and for all you do wherever you are. We look forward to joining with you in the new year.

And a P.S. to those interested in our missional community: we have Christmas Eve candlelighting service for the community at large tonight at 6 pm followed by cider and cookies, etc. And on Sunday Dec. 30 we will have a special Christmas communion and a celebatory fun outing perhaps breakfast at El Rio Verde and then on to somewhere else to be determined. And on Sunday, Jan. 6 stay tuned for news of a special 10 year Anniversary of our church, first begun on Jan. 6, Epiphany Day, 2003 in Owasso OK as Epiphany Church then later moved to Turley and as The Living Room Church and then six years ago we transformed into the missional church at A Third Place and now January will have been two years since we moved here into this building and became The Welcome Table.

www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com to read through the years of history of posts.

We have enjoyed this Advent season watching and discussing the new monastic DVD called The Awakening of Hope, and it and the anniversary have spurred us to begin the new year with conversations and prayers and new visions of what we still are called to become. Definitely more on that as the New Year and Epiphany draws near.....

Thank you (did I mention end of the year donations are very very much needed and appreciated and can be made at the new GoFundMe site for us at http://www.gofundme.com/1msvm8 or still at www.turleyok.blogspot.com or by mail to A Third Place Foundation at 5920 N. Owasso Ave. Turley, OK 74126.) and blessings and more to come,

Ron

Community Free Christmas Party, plus Movie and Meal, plus Candle Making at the Community Art Day, and More Events Growing Community For All

Our Annual Community Christmas Party and Meal, with Santa and carolling and videos and gifts for children, will be held Sunday, Dec. 9 from 5 to 7 pm at the Welcome Table Community Center, 5920 N. Owasso Ave. Come and enjoy the turkey and the company and the carols and the community.

Here are the other coming events in our community. Please share.

1.     Free Meal and Documentary Movie, “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices,” Tuesday, Dec. 11,  6:30 pm, community center.

2.     Food Pantry, Nutrition Advisor, Pastoral Counseling, Computer Center, Clothing Room, Library/Free Bookstore each Wednesday Noon to 4 pm, community center. See below for the new expansion of the Food Pantry to first Saturdays.

3.     Turley Area Art Studio Free Community Art Day at the Center, making candles for gifts, Sat. Dec. 15 9 am to 4 pm. All ages welcome.

4.     Northside and Turley Community Connections Meeting with State Reps. Seneca Scott, Kevin Matthews, and State Sen. Jabar Shumate, Sat. Dec. 15 10 am Rudisill Library, Pine and Greenwood.

5.     Legal Aid Services of Eastern Oklahoma with The Welcome Table. Call Sara Cherry 918-295-9461 for appointments for free help.

6.      “GROW TURLEY” Planning Meeting Thurs. Jan. 3, 3:30 pm, community center.

7.     The Welcome Table worship gatherings during the holidays. Call 918-691-3223 or go to www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com

8.     Pancake Breakfast, Sat. Jan. 12  8 to 10 am, Odd Fellows, 6227 N. Quincy Ave. $5 for all you care to eat; kids under 10 eat free.

9.     “Life 101” Relationship Class with Rev. Ron Robinson, 10 am Wednesdays, followed with meal. Call 918-691-3223 to enroll for free.

10.            Volunteering at the Community GardenPark, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. call 9183463475.

11.            New…Saturday Food Pantry Day… first Saturdays beginning Jan. 5, 2013, 11 am to 1 pm.

12.            Join Us in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Candlelight walk Sunday, Jan. 20, 5 pm, downtown, and in the Parade, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013, 9:30 am. Call for information.

13. Next Mobile Van Food Giveaway Day, Friday, Jan. 25, 11 am, at the Community Center.

13.            Recovery 12 step groups. Saturdays, 6 pm Jerks Anonymous, 7:30 pm, Alcoholics Anonymous,  community center

14.              Turley Water Board Public Meeting, Last Working Day of Month, 8:30 am, 6108 N.      Peoria Ave. Turley Fire Dept. Meetings  Thursdays, 7 PM, Fire Station, 6408 N. Peoria.