Miami, 1961 An eerie wailing from the front door startled abuela as she cracked another egg into the sizzling cast-iron skillet. The shrill voices were insistent and demanding. In her sixty-seven years, she’d heard nothing like it. “Triko-tree! Triko-tree!” After the recent evidence of brujería (witchcraft) in the neighborhood, abuela was wary. More evil sorcery might be afoot here in La Yuma. She inched to the kitchen doorway and peered […]
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Chris Henrikson | The community cure for a violent culture
Chris Henrikson is the founder of Street Poets, Inc., a non-profit poetry-based violence intervention program for high-risk youth in the juvenile detention camps, continuation schools and streets of Los Angeles County. Henrikson also calls it “a poetry-based peace-making organization,” which uses the creative process as a vehicle for individual and community transformation. I first learned of Street Poets at a Malidoma Somé ancestor ceremony in Ojai, California, which two young […]
Andre Perry, Ph.D. | Why better test scores won’t fix society
I am a New Orleanian and those of us who consider New Orleans home only have to leave our city for a few days to understand the spirit of place that is community. But spirit alone cannot sustain community; along with the spirit of a place, community members need very real resources to thrive. In this regard, theorists MacIver and Page offer a good definition of community. In their 1949 […]
Darlene Wolnik | Food, farmers markets, and community
As a blue-collar kid raised in the downward-spiraling Midwest, I never really understood the idea of languorous family dinners, large holiday gatherings and impromptu get-togethers. My family, like so many others, broke into pieces early on with my parents’ divorce. Since earlier generations had died young, or moved to other states for employment reasons, my family was tiny to begin with, so the lack of relatives left no discernible hole […]
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