Neighborhoods and people of faith power dialogue and action in Indianapolis

by Julie Fanselow

July 12, 2007 | | Indianapolis, Indiana

Dovella Wilkins was always urging her father to get more involved in environmental issues. As an Indianapolis college student, she’d joined several “green” groups and often suggested to her dad – a United Methodist minister – that he become active, too.

Dovella died at the age of 25 in 2004. Less than a year later, while trying to get a $98,000 loan to renovate his congregation’s youth building, the Rev. Ray Wilkins discovered through an environmental analysis that a nearby business had disposed of trichloroethylene, a toxic chemical that had possibly seeped into subsurface water flowing beneath the Scott United Methodist Church property.

In his daughter’s memory and in the spirit of justice, Wilkins found himself with a new calling. He was soon part of an intentionally diverse and action-oriented community conversation (also called a study circle) pairing clergy and others from his predominately African-American neighborhood, Martindale-Brightwood, with people from the mostly white Southeast Indianapolis neighborhood. The circle grew into a larger group that now meets monthly to help neighbors recognize and deal with the health and property effects of pollution left by abandoned businesses.

 

Ray Wilkins and Jayne Moynahan Thorne at Scott United Methodist Church. Courtesty Julie Fanselow

In fact, Wilkins’ church sits at the confluence of at least two separate streams of community organizing that include dialogue that have developed in Indianapolis over the past decade. In addition to its work with the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center (INRC, in a program funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation via the Central Indiana Community Foundation), Scott United Methodist is a partner – along with St. Luke’s United Methodist and Barnes United Methodist – in a multi-church initiative that has held numerous study circles on race relations.

All the community dialogues in Indianapolis focus on building relationships within and between communities that might not seem, at first glance, to have much in common. They all empower people to take control of their neighborhoods and provide support for them to create positive change. Here are some more examples:

‘A civic revival’

Like Rev. Wilkins, Callie Sanders has lived through the wrenching loss of an adult child. After her son was murdered at age 21, Sanders could have chosen to shut out the wider world, but instead the president of the Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Association has led study circles aimed at making the racially integrated community a safer place to live. At first, she says, “I didn’t think anyone would come” because people tend to keep to themselves in this area just north of downtown Indianapolis. Yet with the help of Val M. Tate, a neighborhood development specialist at INRC, Sanders found ways to encourage folks to get involved.

Through a series of one-on-one conversations at the Boulevard Place Café, Sanders asked people how they wanted to see the neighborhood improve, and whether they’d be interested in attending study circles to help make it happen. More than 50 partners – churches, businesses, and civic groups – committed to support the neighbors’ efforts, and the mayor of Indianapolis, Bart Peterson, spoke at a kickoff held on National Night Out.

 

Residents take part in a Great Indy Neighborhoods visioning session. Courtesy Julie Fanselow

The Butler-Tarkington neighbors came up with a host of ways to improve life in their neighborhood. A senior safety forum attracted 300 people including numerous city officials and media representatives. They identified neighborhood zones, each with a captain who serves as a conduit for information and organizing as the community works toward the goals set at the study circles.

They’ve launched a neighborhood “Treasure Hunt” (also known as the “Assets Hunt”) in which participating neighbors get a card listing a variety of local “treasures”: churches, businesses, community landmarks. People get points for each visit, and at the end, there will be a drawing for prizes including tickets to see the Super Bowl-champion Indianapolis Colts.

The Rev. Don Garrett of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Indianapolis, which hosted an action forum (a large-group meeting following the dialogues where participants set priorities for action), remarked that night that the experience felt like a revival. “It’s a civic revival,” one participant added. Now, Sanders and her Butler-Tarkington neighbors hope to see the idea spread across Indianapolis, one neighborhood at a time.

Journeys to wholeness

Barnes United Methodist Church is in another neighborhood known for high crime rates, but the 700-member, mostly African-American church isn’t willing to settle for the status quo. Every Friday night, members of the church hit the streets in teams of three to five people to “engage” drug dealers and gang members. At times, others have joined them from the multi-church race relations study circles partnership.

“We’re being a presence,” says the Rev. Charles Harrison, who has been pastor at Barnes since 1993. “We try to offer hope and show alternatives to life on the streets.” Barnes offers many of those alternatives as part of its ministries: basketball leagues for middle school and high school boys; Club Hope, a teen drop-in center; and several youth camps. “We have 400 kids here on Friday nights,” says Harrison.

Harrison believes strongly that churches must provide leadership in the African-American community. He is part of a ministerial coalition (modeled after the 10-Point Coalitions active in other cities) that proposes to lift the quality of life for minorities and lower-income Indianapolis residents by providing privately run programs to strengthen youth; assist people in reentering employment; build up black families; do gang interventions; and offer more residential substance abuse treatment centers. 

He’d like to see his own denomination, the United Methodist Church, use study circles more widely. “I wish we could get the leadership within the conference to do study circles and talk about these issues,” he says. Beyond that, he also says he’d love to see study circles happen citywide. “Our denomination is strong enough to influence people to make it happen,” he adds.

At the same time, the church must continue to explore its own history of racism. Deborah Greene, a member of Barnes UMC, says that many whites and younger blacks in her study circle were unaware that until the late 1960s, predominately black United Methodist congregations were segregated into a separate conference. As one of their action items, they decided to start a “Race Relations and Beyond: A Journey to Wholeness” series to more deeply explore issues of white privilege and institutional racism. Events have included a visit by Paul Rusesabagnia, who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda; a viewing of a Frontline documentary on the O.J. Simpson verdict; and a dialogue about the book The Covenant with Black America, edited by Tavis Smiley. Events rotate among the multi-church congregations at Barnes, St. Luke’s, and Scott United Methodist Churches.

(See the sidebar on how the multi-church partnership hopes to continue growing in the future.)

A ‘Hootenanny Fiesta’

Like most areas of the United States, Indianapolis has a growing Latino population. Many Latinos live on the city’s near west side, an area that’s long been home to people whose families came to the city from rural southern Indiana or the rest of the Appalachian Mountain region. “Imagine waking up and having people living on either side of you, and you can’t understand them,” says Hawthorne Community Center executive director Diane Arnold.

 

Judge Smith and neighborhood leader Diane Arnold at Judge's BBQ on Indy's near west side. Courtesy Julie Fanselow

Washington Street is a major route through west Indianapolis, dividing the Hawthorne Neighborhood to the north from the We Care Neighborhood to the south. (We Care got its name from the idea that “No one else may care about our neighborhood, but WE care.”) The closing of a local school and court-ordered busing further frayed the neighborhood.

Many businesses along this section of Washington Street are now Latino-owned. In an effort to re-brand the area as an international district, the city commissioned an artist to do a mural of flags representing Central and South American countries and considered renaming the street Avenue of the Americas. Local white residents wore red, white, and blue to a rally protesting the ideas. “I thought we were going to have a riot,” Arnold recalls.

But no riots happened. Instead, after several years of what Arnold calls  “intentional mixing” at study circles, white and Latino residents are studying each other’s languages, taking salsa dancing classes, and sharing meals together. Arnold explains, “We used to do a ham-and-bean dinner, but no Latinos ever came.” But that changed when Arnold asked women from Mujeres Bonitas – a domestic violence awareness class disguised as a piñata-making group – to attend and bring some Hispanic food. The event is now known as the Hootenanny Fiesta.

Arnold says that the near west side study circle participants were asked, as homework, to get to know their neighbors. One woman had lived in her house 10 years but had never met the Hispanic woman next door. She took a chance to meet her and tell her about study circles. Now they often have coffee together and babysit each other’s kids. Through sharing food, language, and friendships, Arnold says people are finding that “you can move out, or you can stay and learn to appreciate the diversity.” Residents of these neighborhoods are also working together in the Great Indy Neighborhoods Initiative project (see sidebar).

Building leadership

We’ll end this story where we began, with the developing partnerships between the Martindale-Brightwood and Southeast neighborhoods, where study circles organized by the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center are fostering youth and adult leadership skills. For example, a teen study circle at Scott United Methodist Church led to action items including youth-designed activities for winter break and a 30-hour “famine” in which the youth fasted as a fundraiser for the Christian relief organization World Vision.

Since 2000, INRC has provided support to 140 study circles, which have engaged nearly 1,300 people in their communities.  The center offers coaching, help with recruiting, technical assistance with study circle implementation and action forums, and other support to move action ideas to outcomes. “Study Circles are among the tools INRC uses in its work with neighborhoods to help residents identify and build upon their community’s assets,” says Amy Tompkins, neighborhood development specialist at INRC. 

 

Sue Roberson and Elizabeth Ryan (with Hazel). Courtesy Julie Fanselow

Sue Roberson (the youth minister at Scott United Methodist) and Elizabeth Ryan (a stay-at-home mom from Southeast) are two people who’ve received INRC training with a goal of institutionalizing study circles in their neighborhoods. The experience helps people understand what’s going on in various parts of the city, Roberson notes. “It puts people on a level playing field,” Ryan adds. “People who haven’t had leadership opportunities find their voices,” whether they never finished high school or hold a graduate degree. The same environmental justice concerns unearthed by Rev. Wilkins are of great interest to Roberson and Ryan, who would like to see study circles help parents learn how to cope with widespread lead poisoning in their neighborhoods, as well as help senior citizen homeowners get assistance with the cost of lead abatement.

Also finding their voices are youth from the Martindale-Brightwood community who are bused to schools outside their neighborhood. Through a partnership between Oasis of Hope Baptist Church and the Metropolitan School District of Perry Township, four separate study circles were held for high-school age young men and women, sixth-grade girls, and parents of children attending schools in the district. The student circles took place after school; the parent gathering met at the church, with child care provided for the nearly two dozen children of the eight parents attending.

The youth are now working on action items that sprung from the circles. The teen boys, some of whom have few adult male role models, have been invited to start attending a monthly men’s breakfast at the church and begin mentoring relationships with the older men. The teen girls – intrigued by the mother-daughter team that facilitated their circle – are eager to interview people their age and their mothers’ ages about what it takes to have successful relationships. They may videotape these oral histories; they’re also interested in writing poetry and performing music about relationships.

“To me, it was a triple crown win,” says Shirley Alexander, who coordinated the program as achievement advisor for the Perry Township schools. “The schools won, the participants won, and the facilitators won. The students were heard, the parents were heard, and no one wanted it to end.”

Great Indy Neighborhoods Initiative: Helping communities become better

 

It was a hot June evening on Indianapolis’ near west side. It would have been an easy night to plop down in front of the TV, but about 60 local residents were gathered at the Christamore House for a visioning session to begin re-imagining what their communities might look like as “Great Indy Neighborhoods.”

After grabbing a free supper at a sandwich buffet, people huddled around tables to look over neighborhood maps and identify areas beset by vacant properties, drug dealing, and prostitution. At the same, time, however, they took inventory of their neighborhoods’ many assets: proximity to White River State Park and downtown, thriving businesses, innovative urban housing, and blue-ribbon schools. Each table identified four or five priorities for improving the neighborhood. Top ideas included better lighting, less trash dumping, more police presence in crime hot spots, and a crackdown on landlords who leave properties vacant.

Amy Tompkins of the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center, a partner in the Great Indy Neighborhoods Initiative (GINI), says that staff from the Study Circles Resource Center spent two days in Indianapolis earlier this year sharing stories of how study circles had been used in other planning processes across the country and discussing how they might be used in GINI.  As a result of this discussion, GINI partners will use study circles after visioning sessions as a way of engaging new and different people in the life of the community.  Tompkins says study circles will be used to help communities further explore and take action on the issues that come out of the visioning process.

 

 

But even at the visioning session, initial action steps were being planned. Leaders spoke of how, in the months to come, neighborhood residents would hit the streets with handheld GPS units to better pinpoint locations of illegal activity and ill-kept properties. Two young men spoke about plans to paint a mural on the community center. Organizers announced an upcoming neighborhood clean-up day. Last but not least, door prizes were awarded to thank folks for coming.

GINI is a three-year initiative aimed at engaging more grassroots leaders to work together to develop and implement a comprehensive quality-of-life plan.  Funding and staff support comes through the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, along with the City of Indianapolis and the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center. Tompkins says that study circles and GINI both help neighbors recognize and build on their assets and what they can do collectively to help make things even better. Or as Great Indy Neighborhoods facilitator Nedra Feeley put it at the Christamore gathering, “As we’re hearing common concerns, we’re also hearing solutions.”

For more information, see http://www.greatindyneighborhoods.org.

Partnership at a plateau considers ways to grow

By any measure, the Indianapolis multi-church race relations study circles have been a great success. The pastors of all three participating churches (Barnes, St. Luke’s, and Scott) are committed to using the circles “to create a Christ-like relationship among diverse people.”

More than 250 people have taken part in the circles since they began in 2000. They’ve learned from one another’s perspectives, and they’ve shared rich experiences ranging from social events and community service projects (including a Habitat for Humanity house build) to field trips. Some have even had the opportunity to attend “Follow the North Star,” an interactive program at the Conner Prairie living history museum in Fishers, Indiana, where participants learn what it was like to travel as escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad.

Yet it sometimes seems that everyone from the three churches who would like to take part in the circles has already done so. The multi-church partnership is now thinking about how to take study circles to the next level. “I’d like to see us bring more people to the table who haven’t grown their circle of friends beyond the white guys – or the black guys – they grew up with,” says Jill Mercer, chair of the race relations study circles.

The first race relations study circle formed with St. Luke’s UMC and Barnes UMC in July 2000 was not easy to put together. Jayne Moynahan Thorne, director of outreach ministries at St. Luke’s, says potential participants didn’t know what they were getting into with such open conversation around a somewhat uncomfortable subject, nor did busy people want to commit to a two-hour, five-week session schedule. 

But Thorne, the instigator and promoter of the first circle, saw the potential value of what the study circles could create and plied her first participants with good food and lots of encouragement and reminders each week.  By the time the first circle was completed, she had found 10 converts to the value of the study circle process, and the program has continued growing under her gentle prodding for more than eight years.

Mercer says she first became involved because – as the white single parent of a biracial son – she wanted to learn more about race relations and connect with other parents. “It’s been a good network of people who do a lot of cool, interesting things,” she says. “But sometimes I think we’re preaching to the choir.”

Yet the Rev. Dr. Kent Millard, senior pastor at St. Luke’s, says the study circles touch people even if they don’t take part. He tells of one parishioner – a respected businessman - who told a Sunday-morning service of several thousand people that he was “the worst kind of racist” because he’d been in denial about how white privilege had enriched his life. He began a videotaping project to help African American children tell their stories.

Millard also relates a story about a study circle he attended where participants were discussing what to do about crime. “It was amazing that every white person said ‘more police’ and every black person said better housing, better schools, better jobs,” he recalls. “That struck me. It helped me see that we are looking at life through different lenses.”

As they grapple with how to grow their study circles, organizers seem eager to attract a broader base of participants. It’s already happening, as some of the multi-church circles intersect with those led by the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center. There’s also talk of connecting with other nonprofit networks, as well as additional faith communities – Methodist and others – in the Indianapolis area. Millard says he’d like to see Indianapolis city leaders participate as well.

The Rev. Marion Miller, associate pastor of outreach ministries at St. Luke’s, says younger participants can bring new energy to the process, too. Frequently, circles attract people in their 50s or older whose race-relations perceptions were shaped by the civil rights era in the 1960s. But people in their 20s and 30s have a different, more forward-looking perspective that can illuminate both the progress made in recent decades and the prejudices that still exist.

St. Luke’s staff members also know that study circles aren’t the only useful tool for building diversity. Miller, who is black, is leading an inclusiveness team that is finding ways to make people of color more visible and involved in church life. Recently, for example, people of color and youth have been added to the ranks of “invocators,” or those who call the congregation to worship. St. Luke’s also is considering developing a partnership with nearby North Central High School in hopes of attracting more minority teens to the church’s youth programs.

But Miller says that small-group dialogues to “celebrate the similarities and honor the differences” are central to advancing inclusiveness. “We want to be more intentional about getting more people involved in race relations study circles,” she adds. “We want it to be part of the culture.”

Fast facts about Indianapolis

• St. Luke’s United Methodist Church is among the Top 10 United Methodist Churches in the United States in terms of attendance. There are 5,700 members, with an average of 3,100 attending a service each week. Scott United Methodist Church has about 150 members, and Barnes United Methodist Church has about 700.
• The Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center (INRC) is a private not-for-profit organization established in 1994 to strengthen, develop, and empower neighborhood-based organizations and residents to be advocates for and instruments of positive change in their neighborhoods and to build and maintain better community.
• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 784,118 people lived in Indianapolis in 2005. About 66 percent of the population is white, 25 percent is black, and 6 percent is Latino.
• From the Indiana State Library website: “Nationally, Indiana was said to have the most powerful Ku Klux Klan. Though it counted a high number of members statewide, its importance peaked in the 1924 election of Edward Jackson for governor. A short time later, the scandal that surrounded D.C. Stephenson destroyed the image of the Ku Klux Klan as upholders of law and order. By 1926 the Ku Klux Klan was crippled and discredited. Later efforts to revive the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s and 1970s were attempted, but its message was not received in large numbers, as it had been forty years previously.”
• For narrative histories of several of the neighborhoods mentioned in these articles, visit the website of the The Polis Center at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.

Learn more: Neighborhoods  | Racial Equity  | Youth Issues