Last Sunday the following appeared on the editorial page of Sunday, Feb. 17th Florida Times-Union:

"Jacksonville has spent great amounts of time and treasure to reduce its state-leading murder rate. Commissions have been formed, a prayer meeting was held at the Veterans Memorial Arena, experts were brought in, Jacksonville Community Council Inc. was enlisted. Yet just about every year more Jacksonville residents die by suicide than by murder-- and it's hardly noticed....Ben Warner, JCCI executive director, said in an email: ‘We'd love to do a study on suicides....The funding climate has changed dramatically, and now anything we undertake has to pass two tests: First (and most important), is this of critical value to the community? If it isn't, we won't do it. But then we have to ask a second question, will someone pay for it?’”

Here's why I think Mike Clark of the Florida Times-Union wants JCCI to conduct an inquiry into suicide: he knows that when it is a citizen-based inquiry, there will be advocacy. The fact is that the editorial piece gave the solution. It states, "Jacksonville needs a mental health walk-in center." That might be true. What Mike knows is that in order to get a mental health walk-in center, citizens need to be behind it. There have to be advocates.

Every improvement to our community costs money. Even changing a policy requires people to operate differently, or new people to be hired. And when we are talking about a public health issue such as suicide, we are talking about public dollars.

I attended two events recently that illustrate why we need a citizen-based inquiry into suicide; an inquiry that will result in a group of citizens ready to advocate for better mental health care in Jacksonville.

First, on February 12, the Health Planning Council of Northeast Florida held a press event in Hemming Plaza. After the dignitaries spoke, Moody Chisholm, President and CEO of St. Vincent’s Healthcare, asked for questions. A woman who did not work in community health, public health, or perhaps had not worked in a while was listening and started walking toward Moody. She asked this excellent question: "What will this plan for coordinated health programming mean for people who are chronically ill?"  She mentioned how difficult it is to afford medication. I immediately thought that perhaps she was referring to being chronically mentally ill. At that moment, she was asking an advocate's question: "What will this do to change my life?"

Second, on February 20, the Society for Marketing Professional Services North Florida held a forum on Transportation at UNF. In attendance were highway engineers, geotechnical engineers, architects, lawyers, politicians, and community leaders. The purpose of the forum was to discuss how business and government can collaborate together to reach out to citizens and build support for better roads and mass transit. It was an inspiring meeting because a transportation advocate from Georgia described a campaign for a penny tax that now funds road infrastructure throughout the state.

Citizens do make investments in fly-overs, retention ponds, and better roads. We enlist all the right people to do that for us. We advocate for better roads and our transportation gateway which creates better jobs and a higher standard of living.

I bet that out of the hundred or more people in attendance at that transportation meeting, close to all of us have been touched by a substance abuse or mental health problem in our family, friends, relatives. So why can’t we have a similarly inspiring meeting about mental health?

Mike Clark is right to compare suicide to homicide. In Jacksonville we die from mental illness more frequently than from homicide. And we have experienced a school shooting already.

In 2012, Shane Schumerth, a twenty-eight year-old Spanish teacher was fired at Episcopal School of Jacksonville. Later he killed headmaster Dale Regan and himself.  Schumerth’s family subsequently told the Florida Times-Union that he struggled with depression and paranoia. Citizens need to understand how community mental health influences their risk of experiencing another tragedy. And more importantly, Jacksonville residents want to know how they can advocate for a stronger system of mental health services. A specific gap has already been identified which indirectly affects risk of future tragedy:

-- Psychotic disorders present in early adulthood, between the ages of 18 and 24.
-- No state or federal dollars are available to fund mental health services for young adults over the age of 18.
-- Young adults are less likely to hold a job that affords them health insurance, and less likely to hold insurance that has mental health parity.

We need advocates for better community mental health services in Jacksonville. We need them because there are too many people suffering from severe and persistent mental illness without the support of the health insurance industry-- just like the woman who asked her advocacy question in Hemming Plaza this month.Chronically mentally ill folks often lack support of family or friends, and when they struggle for too long, they end up breaking laws and committing offenses, whether violent or non-violent. As Sheriff John Rutherford has said many times publicly, ‘I am the leader of Jacksonville's largest mental health facility.’

JCCI has engaged citizens in learning and advocacy for mental health. In 2008 JCCI Forward conducted an issue forum on youth suicide. Out of that work, several persons became more engaged in community mental health and advocacy. In fact, the chair of the forum later became Board Chair for our local chapter of Mental Health America, a support, advocacy and education organization. Later, a speakers bureau made presentations to citizens, raising awareness of youth suicide; to understand the warning signs and how to connect to help.

And efforts to coordinate a system mental health care for Jacksonville’s vulnerable children are underway. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration in Washington DC awarded Jacksonville a $9 million grant to get mental health services to children in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. The Women's Giving Alliance focuses its grantmaking on mental health of girls and women.

These pieces (addressing vulnerable youth, females, or suicide) are exactly why Jacksonville needs a citizen-based inquiry into the current state of mental health in our community. Yes, we need programs designed specifically for girls. And we need to be aware of the warning signs of teen suicide. More importantly, our decision-makers, citizens, and politicians need to have a birds-eye view of mental health in Jacksonville. All the pieces must be coordinated so as to be meaningful as a whole, or else we all lose. We cannot afford to not understand the big picture.

And if that is not enough reason to financially support a large-scale inquiry into mental health in Jacksonville, here's another reason: on the horizon are major changes that will affect the life of the woman who asked her question in Hemming Plaza. If indeed she suffers from chronic mental illness, then she knows that health insurance generally discriminates against her illness. A person living with schizophrenia can get a lifetime mental health benefit of 60 days of inpatient hospitalization from insurance. For an illness whose hallmarks include periods of relapse, that is cruel. In 2014, when the Affordable Care Act is implemented, mental health benefits on par with health benefits will be more widely accessible. We all need to understand what these changes will mean for us individually and as a community.

What You Can Do: Tell Jacksonville's leaders how to measure progress towards better community mental health. Attend the March 19 meeting of the JAX2025 initiative and state your views. When we have the vision, the money will follow.

Starting this year, and forever more, all graduation rates will only measure standard diplomas. So the students who get a GED or certificate of completion are no longer considered graduates. This affects the trend line for graduation.

Old Calculation Method	New Calculation Method

The graduation rate dropped about 10 percentage points because of the new calculation method. Last year’s graduation rate looked as if we are graduating almost three-quarters of our students. If you take out all the students who didn’t graduate with a standard diploma, then we only graduated less than two-thirds of students.

What happens to students who don’t graduate with a standard diploma on time? Well, data from the Florida Department of Education can take us only so far.

Here’s what happened with the rest of our students who were in 9th grade and did not graduate four years later:

• 5.6% dropped out officially
• 1.7% graduated with a diploma-based GED
• 2.0% graduated with a certificate of completion

Another 23 percent just did not graduate. Of those, another 2 percent take 5 years to graduate. The 5-year modified graduation rate was 69.2% in 2012.

1 in 5 of our ninth graders starting high school this August will want to graduate. And the adults around them will want the same thing for them. They won’t, and that’s the bad news…

There’s another way of looking at all of this, too.

• In 2005 56% of all ninth graders graduated with a standard diploma on time.
• In the same year, the Community Foundation in Jacksonville launched its Quality Education for All initiative.
• 2006: Pew Partnership for Civic Change chooses Jacksonville for its Learning to Finish campaign
• 2007: United Way of Northeast Florida began its Achievers for Life program
• 2008: Duval County Public Schools publishes a Dropout Prevention Plan and Teach for America arrives in Jacksonville
• 2009: Jacksonville Public Education Fund opens its doors
• 2010: Florida’s first KIPP school opens in Jacksonville
• 2011: Duval County Public Schools, Schools for the Future and the Jacksonville Public Education Fund collaborate to support a new school for middle school students performing two years behind their peers.
• 2012: 20 percent increase in graduate rate within 7 years as 67.7% of ninth graders graduate with a standard diploma.

The good news is that when Jacksonville wants to, the entire community finds solutions and changes the odds for students.

The truth is, there is always good and bad news. Can’t have one without the other!

One of the indicators in the Race Relations Progress Report is giving people heartache. The first reaction, from everyone— no matter their worldview or political leaning— is: “Are you sure?” I’ve observed several discussions of this indicator during the fall and winter, and one of the strongest responses to the “are you sure?” question is this: “Data is data. That’s the way it is.”

Below is the indicator that blows everybody’s socks off…

In your opinion during the last year, do you feel that racism is a problem in Jacksonville?

YES

For the first time in 27 years, two seemingly separate trend lines converge. A part of the natural order of things disappeared! According to this indicator, since 1985, Whites and African-Americans in Jacksonville always see the city differently—until 2012. Even the groundbreaking work JCCI published in 2002 concluded, “The wide range of perceptions among Jacksonville’s citizens about past and current racial disparities impedes resolution of all problems in race relations.” 10 years later we don’t have a wide gap in terms of understanding racism as a problem. Oops.

Probably when this indicator began its useful and informative life in 1985, people were in the habit of saying things like “perception is reality.” Even if Whites and African-Americans don’t agree on the existence of racism as a community-wide, structural problem in Jacksonville, this indicator opened the conversation to a shared place to start from: White’s perceptions are not the only perceptions. And if perception is reality, then there is a totally different reality that Whites need to think about.

In 2010 the trend lines were moving apart and a not-surprising 32 percentage point difference separated African-American and White perceptions. That year, 48 percent of Whites thought racism is a problem in Jacksonville while 80 percent of African-Americans felt the same. Two years later, we’re agreeing. And yet many people feel as if we’re living in a divisive time when more of us are camping out on extreme opposite ends of the island with no desire to meet in the middle. So what’s going on with this indicator?

Survey respondents

First of all, let’s talk about the respondents to the question. More than half of respondents refused to say how old they are; however survey respondents are generally older Jacksonville residents. Keep in mind that the telephone survey is conducted between 5:30pm and 9:00pm in the evening and relies mostly on telephones, or what I used in the previous century— a land line. Some of the calls are made to cell phone numbers, not the majority. When JCCI asked a more comprehensive set of questions about race relations in a 2008 survey, the majority of White and African-American responses were from people 50 years and older.

Are older White residents less likely to consider racism a problem in Jacksonville compared to their African-American counterparts? Surprisingly, when the results of the survey are broken out by age, males of both races 65 and older are split on whether racism is a problem: 49 percent say ‘yes’ and 47 percent say ‘no.’ Females of both races 65 years and older are more likely to say it is a problem: 55 percent ‘yes’ and 41 percent said ‘no.’ The remainder refused to answer the question. The only age group who always answered the question about racism was the youngest age group.

Why are older Jacksonville residents responding that racism is a problem, and especially Whites?

The conversation is changing

One reason might be because the context for answering the question has changed drastically since 1985. Race, and specifically the concept of racism, has entered political discourse. From Stand Your Ground debates to the Florida Department of Education and Duval County School Board being accused of soft bigotry of low expectations, media consumers on both ends of the political spectrum hear discussions of race relations frequently nowadays. More of us are hearing and seeing the word “racism” while reading newspapers, blogs, and watching television. Of course, how racism is defined varies greatly. But everyone knows it’s out there. A conservative pundit, James Taranto suggests that Democrats and liberals need racism to be a topic.

Racism goes both ways

Another reason brought up by a JCCI volunteer involves white respondents who feel more vulnerable now than ever. It’s possible that White respondents interpret racism as "reverse racism," and respond to the survey question in those terms. I've seen a lot of bumper stickers, and maybe you have too, suggesting “change” is not needed, a powerful reference to coins, taxes, a movement for racial justice, and the Obama presidential campaigns all wrapped in an easily understood collage of words and color. Perhaps many of us in Jacksonville adjust slowly to the idea of an African-American President and Mayor— within a relatively 3 short years from 2008 to 2011.

Finally, as the indicator’s trend lines converge, we need to take a step back from this chart and celebrate. It’s great that we agree on something. JCCI has a powerful partner in the work of bringing together people with different points of view. OneJax is a wonderful institute within the University of North Florida using the Race Relations Progress Report to educate Northeast Florida leaders, youth, and concerned citizens. OneJax builds understanding and respect across more than racial divides, too.

In 1985 the question, “do you feel racism is a problem in Jacksonville” most likely meant something very different. Back then respondents might have been thinking of racism as an interpersonal problem—referring to racist behavior and racist people. Well, many years of bringing people together in Study Circles, youth attending Metrotown and other bridge-building efforts broadened that definition, and now structural racism is discussed. Structural racism identifies policies, practices, and larger social forces such as unemployment and income that shape our lives. The conversation around racism has changed because of a lot of community building, and this indicator demonstrates that healthy change.

Maybe Jacksonville is moving away from being an Old South city. Now is that reality or just perception?

The Quality of Life Review Committee had an interesting discussion last week. They discussed the trend line showing the percent of births to single mothers. The trend line shows that nearly half (47.5%) of all births in Jacksonville are to single mothers. The committee found this alarming.

The increase in the percent of births to single mothers is a concern because children born to single mothers are more likely to grow up poor. A recent research brief from ChildTrends covers the national picture of single mothers and poverty. Two Generations of Poverty: Status and Trends Among Parent and Children in the United States, 2000-2010 offers national data on the issue of single-mothers, children and poverty. Below are some interesting facts.

• Children growing up in single-mother households experience higher rates of poverty (46.9%) than those growing up in married-couple households (11.6%). The chart below shows percent of poor and low-income children as well as when recessions have occurred.

It is clear that family structure influences the likelihood of a child growing up low-income or poor. And Jacksonville's increase in the percent of children born to single-mothers suggests that we are not improving the odds for our children.

This is my house in November 2002.  Just the other night I realized that I bought it 10 years ago.

It was not possible for me to do such a thing at the ripe age of 38 (now you know how old I am) mainly because I was in school earning a doctoral degree until 30. The First Time Homebuyer's Club was a great program that allowed me to buy these digs with a 1% down payment.

The Community Reinvestment Act (which some blame for the housing market crash) obligated banks to work with community nonprofits to make lending easier. The end of this story is that I became the poster child for the 1st Time Homebuyer's Club-- literally. I was in a video and featured in larger-than-life size pictures at an Annual Meeting along with other Jacksonvillians who were helped out.

No, here's the end of the story: In the 10 years that my partner and I have been in the house, neighbors have come and gone. We are here to stay. We maintain the alleyway and distribute flyers for the neighborhood association. So the Community Reinvestment Act worked here. And it worked because of a nonprofit whose mission was to stabilize neighborhoods. 

All this was made possible by a nonprofit called the Housing Partnership of Northeast Florida, which offered the 1st Time Homebuyer's Club. This wonderful nonprofit was led by Carolyn Ettlinger. Last night she spoke to Forward's "Shifting Gears" Forum. 

Dr. Shannon Perry, President of Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida also spoke. Their topic was about transitions- how does the younger generation start stepping up and taking leadership positions in nonprofits? And how do folks who founded amazing nonprofits pass on their expertise, vision, and passion to the younger folks?

This is not a question without consequence. I would not have been able to buy my house if not for the vision that Carolyn and others had. What happens when Carolyn is ready to retire?

Well, for one, she looks around for a Dr. Shannon Perry, who is a highly-competent, very smart person, has broad experience and can step up to the challenge of leading a nonprofit. And that's what Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida did. They looked around for a new President by doing a national search. It turned out that their national search found someone right here in Jacksonville.

Why is that? This is a question that I've wondered about many times. Why do Northeast Florida nonprofits hire people already living here? Why is it that when a national search is conducted, the person selected for the Executive Director job is already here? This happened at JCCI, for example. A national search was conducted, and the Deputy Director of the organization was offered the job. Good choice.

Buy why? Why is it that nonprofits need more than a highly-competent, very smart person who has broad experience, can step up to a challenge, and comes from some other place-- outside Northeast Florida? The answer was offered up last night.

A leader of a for-profit can move around relatively easily and bring their knowledge with them. Strategies for maintaining and improving the bottom line are not that different from Topeka to San Francisco to Key West. Leading an organization to make more money involves processes that can be learned in school and tried out in lots of different places for the best set of outcomes, and tweaked when necessary. 

The nonprofit, it turns out, has a different bottom line. Its bottom line is its mission. And a nonprofit's mission (excluding large national ones such as American Cancer Society and so forth) is specific to a community, which is shaped by history, geography, culture, even expectations. And the mission is sometimes quite unique-- as in the case of JCCI.

Two take-aways from the Nonprofit Night at Shifting Gears...

Nonprofit leadership is in transition because Baby Boomers are retiring, and this situation is not the same as it is for for-profits. Successful nonprofit leadership requires internalizing a mission that is unique to a specific community. And finding leaders to take over those jobs might be more usefully thought of as cultivating new leaders...

Younger leaders need to step up and start cultivating themselves as nonprofit leaders. Its a big step. The community depends on it, too.

On Friday JCCI hosted an international expert on children’s rights, Gerison Lansdown. She is the founding Director of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England.

We’ve all seen amazing parents devoted to creating an environment for their children that is based on love and respect. My co-worker, Tonia, who worked on the Children: 1-2-3 report is an example of someone committed to parenting her son, River. She sees herself as responsible for his growth and development, and ensures that all the adults around him respect his right to express himself, be safe, and be the total intellectual genius that he is. And did I mention JCCI’s President, Ben? Father of eight? Well, he is a committed and responsible father of beautiful young adults and children. All children should be so lucky.

Or should I say: all children have the right to grow up in a safe, clean, healthy and nurturing environment.

It turns out that human rights start at home. One of the early participants in the creation of the United Nations knew that human rights begin where the individual lives and breathes.

All well and good except for the fact that not all homes, schools, and neighborhoods are safe places where children are listened to, learn and grow. Can we make that happen for all children? Absolutely, and we should.

This is where the Convention on the Rights of the Child comes in, a.k.a the CRC. The CRC is a treaty that countries involved in the United Nations sign on to and abide by as they govern themselves. It was ratified in 1989. There is accountability when it comes to the CRC because the United Nations spawned a children’s rights organization after World War II.

It’s called UNICEF-- you might remember them from Halloween. At least I do. We got little orange boxes that had a slit in them for putting in coins. And when we went trick or treating, we asked for donations to UNICEF.

Well, it is UNICEF which now operationalizes the CRC.  UNICEF is making the CRC a reality on a grand scale.

Quite frankly, I don’t know a lot about the United Nations and my understanding of UNICEF extends to Halloween. So I need some ‘splainin’ when it comes to children’s rights. Gerison changed my framework for thinking about rights because she repeated frequently three words: commitments, obligations, and entitlements.

This was a little mind-blowing for me. I’m used to the right to have and the right to do.

Like the right to drive a car. Our laws limit the right to drive a car to those who are physically able. I know people who don’t have the right because they have epilepsy. And my Dad, who survived three strokes, is not allowed to drive a car.

Like the right to have an education. In the U.S. we take this right seriously. In many countries an education is a privilege. On the other hand, in many countries the human right to health care and medical attention is much clearer. In the U.S. we think of medical attention and health care as a privilege dependent on having a full-time job. However, we do use one of Gerison’s words (“entitlement”) when it comes to health. We consider people over 65 to be entitled to healthcare. They use Medicare.

And the individual right to have a gun. This is also how I think of rights: I get to have something. And that is my right—no ifs, ands, or buts.

In contrast to the individual right to have or do, there are responsibilities and commitments to the larger community. This is the part that people in the U.S. forget about frequently. We are super-aware of the individual right to be all we can be, own a gun, and so forth. We are less likely to act on the responsibilities and commitments that individual rights require.

Individual rights require a larger community creating conditions for rights to be exercised. And this is where Gerison said something pretty shocking. She said, ‘the reason the United States is the only so-called ‘more developed country’ on the Earth that has not signed on to the Convention of the Rights of the Child is because the U.S. is not yet committed to creating conditions required for all its children to be safe, have a voice, and be healthy.’

But she said it sweetly, so nobody took offense. Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!

"That is so not funny,” says Mary Poppins.

Here are similar words from our own Sherry Magill, President of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund:

I’m so used to thinking of individual rights as the freedom to do something (go to a rally in Memorial Park) and have something (access to my partner’s pension benefits when I get old) that I often forget what is most important. Rights must be created and expanded continually. If they are reserved for a couple of groups or only some individuals, then those are privileges.

So do children have the right to safety, information, health, and a voice-- and am I obligated to create those conditions for children in my city and neighborhood? Yes.

And we want that in Jacksonville. The Children: 1-2-3 Implementation Task Force is working right now on:

A Child Friendly City? Absolutely. We can make policy with children in mind so that children’s rights to safety, growth, and a voice are respected. The first step in this journey has already been taken. It is getting youth involved in the processes and activities that we already have going on. The Duval Youth Voices Council is starting up now, with Gerison’s guidance and inspiration.

We do stuff to youth every day. We school them, take them on trips, promote them, diagnose them as mentally ill, award them prizes, find them delinquent and arrest them. We develop programs, assistance, and workshops. We take them out of their home and family for the sake of safety. We develop all kinds of things for children and youth without ever asking: What do you think?

Incredible when you think about it. The right to be heard is serious and crucial when it comes to children and youth.

Gerison asked everyone to check out what happens when a Youth Council takes off. So check out Funky Dragon-- a website about the amazing things that Welsh youth are doing with their country’s government.

And many thanks to Jeff Goldhagen for making Gerison’s visit to JCCI possible. We love having people from all over the world come into our conference room to speak about their work. Stay tuned to JCCI for more cool people, presentations, and discussions!

Last night I saw We Remember Raines, a very powerful movie for everyone in Jacksonville-- no, scratch that. Everyone in the U.S.

William M. Raines High School is the alma mater of the filmmaker, Emanuel Washington. We Remember Raines tells the story of Raines High School from its start in the early 1960’s until 2011. It proves, without a doubt, that Raines can be a college-prep school because it was one. The movie's hopeful message is that it can be college-prep again.

Until 1971, Jacksonville had two school districts: one for whites and one for blacks. When Raines opened in the mid-1960’s, all black schools lacked the resources and physical amenities of white schools.

In 1958, Matthew Gilbert High was the heart of the Eastside black community. Earl Kitchings, the school’s football coach, recalls:

Separate and unequal school systems were officially in place until 1970. In 1970, there were 20 all-black schools, and another 8 were 90 percent black. 77.6 percent of all Negro high school students went to a school that was 90 percent black. 

Jacksonville’s decision-makers felt the pressure of African-American residents who wanted an equal education for their children and the students themselves. Rodney Hurst's personal account of the sit-in demonstrations in Jacksonville and Ax-Handle Saturday is a great picture of the resistance and protests. Since 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled the 2-district system unequal, whites were adamant that they would not attend school with blacks. So in the mid-1960’s white decision-makers came up with a solution.

Build a new $2 million high school for blacks! Less than a mile away from the white high school!

This was also in response to the fact that all Jacksonville high schools were disaccredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in the 1960’s. In other words, at that time, all Jacksonville students were considered less prepared and less likely to succeed in college. The problem was Jacksonville was not spending enough money on educating its children, and the school system needed to catch up with the rest of the nation.

Academics were of utmost importance at Raines, and it was the first school in Jacksonville to regain accreditation from SACS. The athletic program at Raines shined in all sports, and especially football. Within the first 10 years the school was open, six young black men blazed a path to the NFL. School clubs such as the Rainesmen and Ladies of Raines turned out leaders who, today, are engaged in preserving Raines culture and history.

One of those people is Cleve Warren, President and CEO of Essential Capital Finance, Inc. The filmmaker asked him: “Why was Raines so successful?” His reply: "Simple. It hired the best teachers in Jacksonville."

And why did that happen at Raines in the mid to late 1960s? One reason is ironic and the other iconic. Ironically, the two-system school district denied all black teachers from teaching white students; they had to teach in all-black schools. Most black teachers at Raines earned master’s and doctoral degrees at universities in the North (e.g. Columbia, Illinois University) or historically black colleges in the South (Florida A&M, Bethune-Cookman) and chose to return to Jacksonville. The second reason Raines had the best teachers in Jacksonville was a man named Andrew Robinson, who became an icon in Florida’s education community. He hired the very best teachers in Jacksonville, who happened to be black, and brought them all to Raines. And he created a school culture that continued long after he left there.

Andrew Robinson’s influence at that time is unimaginable nowadays. He created a culture of educational excellence and integrity that was the envy of Northeast Florida. One of his frequent sayings was: “What you learn after you know it all, is what counts.”

I love this because it means "after you know it all," (you’ve earned all the degrees that you’ll get), the real learning begins. It also suggests a core principle here at JCCI: knowledge is for getting stuff done, not for having, hoarding, and showing off. It also suggests humility when it comes to education and expertise. In other words, knowledge is really about creating relationships with others and building community. It is not for defining the self apart from others.

Andrew Robinson at University of North Florida, where he was the first African-American president of a Florida university.

Last week I was on vacation in Connecticut, which is where my people come from. I was on the Connecticut River at a family reunion. However, in the North, people have some very odd ideas about the South. It gets me every time. Someone there threw me off: “I imagine it’s pretty segregated down there.” Hmm…perhaps it’s more segregated than where that relative lives-- in Brooklyn, NY. I don’t know-- Spike Lee’s films suggest otherwise.

We Remember Raines has given me an excellent answer to all those folks asking about racism in the South and my choice to live in Jacksonville for nearly 20 years. From now on I will reply with something along these lines: “Jacksonville is home to some of the most accomplished, creative, inspiring, thinkers and doers in the U.S. And that’s because we have an incredibly strong and vibrant African-American community here. I’m proud to live in Jacksonville.”

This screening of We Remember Raines was made possible by JCCI Forward, our leadership development program. For more information about Forward’s amazing work, check out their website. Or better yet, come to their next training: “Leading by Facilitation and Consensus 101.” And if you are interested in the current state of equity between races and ethnic groups, check out JCCI's Race Relations Progress Report.

Okay, so it’s the last stop on the line, the last call for alcohol, the last bowl of cereal, there’s one more sock in the dryer….I’ve, ya’ know…

Huh? It’s the truth. Everybody needs to think about how they want to go out — call a funeral home! Start planning on who, what, where and how your body will find its final rest. And take a minute to find out what it will cost, too.

My last party will probably be on a beach. Our resource expert representing a local funeral home said that Florida law prohibits my ashes from being strewn on the beach. Phooey. They also have this thing called ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’

And who’s going to know if my ashes are strewn at the beach at 7pm when the sun sets?

About 35 percent of us go with ashes and 65 percent are buried. What do you want to do? Be in an urn? Buried in the ground at a cemetery? What kind of cemetery? It could be the very beautiful National Cemetery on Lannie Rd. on the Northside.

Here’s the beauty of planning (I’m a plannah-plannah…like a playah-playah so I love this stuff): if I make the funeral arrangements now, the cost of the funeral is what it is when I pre-planned and pre-paid. If I buy life insurance to pay for my funeral in 40 years, I have to pay the cost of a funeral in 40 years. Just like a Florida Pre-Paid College Plan. Except I know I’m going to die. I have no idea whether someone is going to college.

As a result of this meeting, I’ve already decided on the cremation idea. It’s way less expensive than a burial! Way less! ($2,000 vs. $10,000) I want money spent on the party, not on my long-gone body. But that’s just me. That’s just me…signing out…not just yet…just planning on signing out…

Special thanks to Ashley Trapp, JCCI Forward Executive Committee member, for facilitating this session!

Our Am I My Parents' Keeper? conversations continue Thursday, July 26, 11:30-1:00 at JCCI.  Join us to about the legal matters that require attention in end-of-life planning. Lunch is provided. Please RSVP!

Visit the Am I My Parents' Keeper? site for audio recordings of each session, links to resources, and a calendar of speakers.

Here’s a fabulous story we heard from Janet Chamberlain. Her Dad become quite ill very suddenly and went into the hospital with trouble breathing. He didn’t get to leave the hospital. In order to find out what was creating the breathing problem, doctors wanted to (Big Word of the Day coming up) INTUBATE him. Well, we’ve been learning in our discussions that this is where the rubber hits the road. Think carefully about being intubated.

Janet’s Dad learned that once he had the tube in his windpipe, the hospital would keep it in to prolong his life. Well, Janet’s Dad was incredibly aware, lucid, and clear about what he wanted the end of his life to be like. He saw what was out there, what was coming and he planned— all from his hospital bed.

And you know what? He decided against the intubation. He gathered his entire family around him, and very mindfully defined when he would go off oxygen and stop taking breaths.

Which brings me to one of the advanced directives everyone must have: A LIVING WILL. This says, ‘hey, do not resuscitate (if you don’t want to be resuscitated). Hey, do not prolong my life if I can’t eat or breathe on my own.” That kind of thing. Very important because not everyone is as lucky as Janet’s Dad. He was aware, lucid, and clear until the end. The health professionals just asked him, “What do you want to do?”

My parents might be in the hospital at the end of their life and be in a coma. Or have dementia. And you know what, that set of instructions for what to do if they can’t make their own decisions…it’s not the only document needed.

Not Enough?! Not by a long shot. Documents can’t tell doctors what to do when they are faced with a decision to do this or that. Only a person can do that. And you know what the doctor and hospital will do. They will prolong life for as long as possible.

Medical technology is stellar, amazing, and a lifesaver without a doubt. It also means we have 50,000 decisions to make about what to do and not do while in the hospital. Which brings me to another document your parents must have: HEALTH CARE SURROGACY. Some people call it the health care proxy. But there has to be a person who makes the decisions and this document names that person.

1. Got a will, check

2. Living will, check

3. Health care surrogacy, check.

4. Durable power of attorney, check.

5. Pre-need guardian designation, check.

You’re done! Well…not finished…I mean you’re done…with planning on being finished…or you’ve planned to be done…or…you know what I mean….

Special thanks to Ashley Trapp, JCCI Forward Executive Committee member, for facilitating this session!

Our Am I My Parents' Keeper? conversations continue Thursday, July 26, 11:30-1:00 at JCCI.  Join us to about the legal matters that require attention in end-of-life planning. Lunch is provided. Please RSVP!

Visit the Am I My Parents' Keeper? site for audio recordings of each session, links to resources, and a calendar of speakers.

Here are two real things that came up at JCCI today (and a third that is real and unreal at the same time):

1. “I don’t want the government to take away everything that my parents worked for all their lives.”

This fear makes for more trouble. Rebecca Berg, a local elder attorney sees what happens when people have this fear. Their loved one goes from the hospital to rehab or from rehab to a nursing home. “They’re going to charge us $200 a day! They’ll take all her money away!” So they move all the assets and property to their own name in the hopes that none of their parents’ hard-earned money can be touched. It turns out that putting everything in a child’s name can cause major tax headaches later. Not a good idea.

One of our speakers suggested reading up on long-term care insurance. She especially recommended what Consumer Reports says. It’s a relatively new kind of insurance. Then again, we’re living longer, so there’s all kinds of new situations to prepare for.

2. “Who’s going to get their stuff?”

Stuff is houses, property in other states, retirement accounts, savings, life insurance policies, and so on. Estate plans, wills, and trusts are the legal means that you have for keeping stuff in your family…which brings me to Big Word of the Day: PROBATE. All the stuff has to be distributed or turned over, right? So the minute the ticker stops ticking, the courts get involved to decide where it goes to, and that is probate. Which brings me to one of four documents everyone must have: A WILL. When your parents have a will, they are giving the courts a roadmap to where all the stuff should go after they die.

3. And the third is the very real situation of children taking care of parents…

Here is the very best Big Word of the Day! DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY. And here’s my definition of that legal term…if Lynda Carter were an attorney and her bulletproof bracelets were her only weapon. (She’s got the Lasso of Truth besides the bracelets). She’s durable, she’s powerful and she’s an attorney!

The durable power of attorney makes you the person who can handle your parents’ stuff and the health surrogacy makes you the person that can talk to the doctors about your parents. My parents accumulated a lot of stuff, and neighbors, relatives and even moi can set sights on all that stuff. If they make me the durable power of attorney (DPA), then I am in charge of their stuff. Turns out that there is lots of room for exploitation of elders when it comes to the DPA. As a result, in 2011 Florida changed the laws around DPA. So everyone whose DPA was drawn up before 2011 needs to go back for a check-up. Law changed, and now your document could use a review.

This is all tough stuff. And the beautiful thing about JCCI’s Am I My Parents’ Keeper meetings is how our volunteers and participants are willing to share the truth about their lives. Everyone around the lunch table shares what they have gone through and how they learned to do what they do. So all those folks taking on family responsibilities that make them wonder women and wonder men, here’s your Lasso of Truth!

Special thanks to Ashley Trapp, JCCI Forward Executive Committee member, for facilitating this session!

Our Am I My Parents' Keeper? conversations continue Thursday, July 26, 11:30-1:00 at JCCI.  Join us to about the legal matters that require attention in end-of-life planning. Lunch is provided. Please RSVP!

Visit the Am I My Parents' Keeper? site for audio recordings of each session, links to resources, and a calendar of speakers.

This morning, on First Coast Connect, Karen Brune Mathis interviewed John Delaney, President of University of North Florida. (Check out the interview on the July 9 podcast). He was asked about one of his major accomplishments as Mayor of Jacksonville (1995-2003). In 2000, the fifth year of his mayoral administration, Jacksonville voters approved the Better Jacksonville Plan which made possible widening, repairing, repaving, and resurfacing of roads, a new Main Library and several branches, the new baseball park and Arena as well as the Courthouse. Delaney described the logic behind the project. He said that Jacksonville was already a great place to live— and everyone knew that. He wanted to make it even better. Don’t settle for what we have: make Jacksonville outstanding. And voters agreed.

Today, after the worst financial crisis since the Depression and a jobless recovery that continues to stagnate at an 8.2 unemployment rate in the U.S., it is no surprise that few of us are in the mindset to “think big and spend big.” The money just isn’t there.

This shift in thinking makes sense. And yet, what happened to our dreams about making Jacksonville great?  Did the voters in the 2000 election booth think of themselves primarily as taxpayers or citizens of Jacksonville – or both? And what is the difference between thinking of yourself as a citizen or a taxpayer? It’s a question that gets at some of what makes this country great. On the one hand, we govern ourselves in a democratic political order by voting as citizens, even voting to tax ourselves. On the other hand, in order to govern ourselves, local, state, and federal government requires individuals and corporations to pay taxes, taking money out of our pockets.  This often sets up a tricky tightrope to walk. How much governing of ourselves do we want? And how much of our community should be built without government and taxation? These questions are always being answered by elected officials and legislators who pay attention to voters’ views. The important thing is to work through to answers that are satisfactory to as many voters as possible.

Thomas Friedman meditates on this issue of governance at the federal level in two pieces he wrote recently. He thinks that in Washington D.C. the ‘how much governance and taxation’ questions are not being answered. Instead, people are digging in their heels and not working on solutions. In “Down with Everything,” he asks:

Friedman thinks the federal government is paralyzed, in part, by “political divisions [that] have become more venomous than ever.” He thinks what has become more important to us is our political stripe and the ability to block the opponent than our ability to work together and solve problems.

Another piece, “The Fear Factor,” discusses how incredibly lucky we are. U.S. citizens have something extremely powerful: it transcends all the divisions, differences, and identities we live in and through.  We have citizenship. We’ve had a long, hard struggle to develop our idea of citizenship. Put simply, we aren’t as afraid of each other—at least not as afraid as people in countries where democracy is a new and unreal concept.

A citizen thinks beyond their own interests to the interests of others; a citizen thinks about the entire city, state, or country. When we say that we govern ourselves that means that we are governing ourselves as a group, not as a series of individuals who have a personal responsibility to what individuals need, want, and can have.

This is the beauty of JCCI: we have taxpayers, and the people who represent taxpayers, come into our meeting room and talk about projects involving taxes— for example, the public library funding project we just wrapped up. Participants agreed that in order to have a great library system, Jacksonville needs to have a better way of funding it. It’s not necessarily a tax increase. However, it does involve voters approving a referendum in the election booth—just like the Better Jacksonville Plan was approved. At JCCI, some individuals aligned with Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County stood up and voiced their opinion against the majority in the room, which was great. The decision-making process didn’t stop, and the discussions carried on. It was democratic, not vetocratic.

As citizens we are all responsible for how our taxes are spent by our local city government. Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County is a great resource for active, engaged citizens keeping an eye on public spending here in Jacksonville. Citizens are already working on the recommendations in Check It Out: Independent Public Library Funding, and you can keep up with those developments. For example, look at this recent news report about the library budget or listen to a June 20 podcast featuring JCCI’s President, Ben Warner and Harry Reagan, President of the Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library .

JCCI is proud of all its volunteers working to make Jacksonville a great place to live, work, and play. And there are a lot of volunteers! Come join us—you can see our upcoming projects on JCCI’s community calendar.

I was just at a community forum featuring some great speakers. They said to the audience, 'Hey, we solved the problem of people smoking and dying of lung cancer! We solved the problem of drunk driving and killing innocent drivers, and now we have even legislated against not wearing a seat belt. Why can't we take that same smarts, energy, and political will to other problems?'

An excellent documentary series produced by HBO asks the same question, only this time it’s about being overweight and obese. The U.S. population has changed incredibly in terms of how we produce food, how much food costs, what we eat, when we eat, and how many calories we burn in a day's work. The changes in the past 30 years have produced a "perfect storm" in our population’s body weight. The consequences of this storm affect workplace productivity, costs of healthcare, and even our expected life span.

Children, not just adults, are getting fatter. The chart below demonstrates increase in U.S. children who are obese.

Percentage of Children Ages 6-17 Who Are Obese by Race and Hispanic Origin, Selected Years 1976-2008

                                     Source: National Center for Health Statistics, http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/health7.asp

Obesity and overweight are not just a perfect storm. They are a public policy minefield because they involve the economics of the food industry, cultural changes in family structure, psychology and marketing, land use planning and growth, consensus on what is acceptable to eat, and even body image. While many agree that any disease that shortens life should be prevented, not everyone agrees on why obesity is increasing and what to do about it.

This radio program brings together five different views on increasing obesity. The program features an African-American novelist, an HBO producer, an academic, a funder of childhood obesity initiatives, and a physician who advocates for regulations on the food industry. If you are wondering whether obesity starts in the brain or whether it begins in the food industry, or both, check out the program. As with many public health problems to solve, the assumptions I make on what causes the problem will shape how I think it should be solved. If it is a food industry problem, then the solution involves incentives, regulation, and policy. One assumption is that access to food contributes to obesity. The Los Angeles Times reported recently on a study suggesting that access to good food in a neighborhood doesn't necessarily make its residents better eaters.

Or if I see overweight and obesity as a problem in behavior, marketing tools, and profit, then individuals and families need to be the focus. The second episode in the HBO documentary deals with choices, individual psychology, and how to lose weight. A recent New York Times piece says hyper-processed foods, which supermarkets sell a lot of, are a driver in overweight and obesity trends. Maybe it’s both large structures such as the economy and food distribution as well as culture, family, taste and individual desires. Maybe it’s not  an either or question.

Keep checking in with JCCI because we partner with organizations throughout Jacksonville to prevent childhood obesity. There are a lot of great obesity prevention efforts already underway in Jacksonville, and you can get involved in them.

You know what? Don't wait! Check out the Healthy Jacksonville Food Policy Council Facebook page for starters.

“The modern era is at its height, and if we are not to perish of our modernness we have to rehabilitate the human dimension of citizenship.”
--Vaclav Havel, last president of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic.

A recent book, Just Growth, tells the story of where JCCI came from. In 1968, the City of Jacksonville merged with Duval County. “In the summer of 1967, almost 65 percent of the voters supported consolidation” of their county and city governments.

This is pretty rare as metro areas go. Citizens don’t usually get so involved in their local government. And citizens don’t usually organize successfully enough to say, ‘Hey, let’s start over!’ Jacksonville did that, and many say Northeast Florida, as a whole, is better for it. For one, government efficiencies gained through local government consolidation has meant our government costs less. The 2009 JCCI inquiry Our Money, Our City: Financing Jacksonville’s Future found that “Duval County residents’ tax burden, including millage rates, taxes, and fees, is…lower than other Florida metropolitan areas” and “[i]n 2008, Florida ranked 47th out of 50 states for the highest tax burden per resident, with a tax burden of 7.4 percent of income, below the U.S. average of 9.7 percent.”

Six years after consolidation, in 1974, the people who were energized by the campaign to consolidate came together again. “[T]hey agreed that the conversations and plans initiated during the campaign [for consolidation] had to continue if the…region was to succeed. As a result, they created a non-profit organization, the Jacksonville Community Council Inc., with the goal of spurring citizen participation.”

Those people who came together in 1974 at the Amelia Island Conference numbered 91 in all. They were delegates from all corners of Jacksonville: they “represented businesses, activist organizations, government, and organized labor.” We have all their names posted at the front door of JCCI.

At their Conference, delegates agreed on ten priorities for Jacksonville’s future:

1. Downtown development
2. Educational excellence
3. An open and affordable housing supply
4. Land use planning
5. Mass transportation
6. Adequate public utilities (water, sewers, electric power, etc.)
7. Job opportunities
8. Adequate public revenues
9. Joint efforts to improve race relations
10. Cultural enrichment

From Jacksonville: The Consolidation Story, from Civil Rights to the Jaguars

How would you prioritize ten important future issues for Jacksonville? And do your priorities resemble your neighbors’? Your co-workers’?

Being a citizen means more than voting. It means steering the future of local government. In 1974, 100 Jacksonville citizens took seriously the idea of a “human dimension of citizenship.” And they made JCCI so that all of us, 38 years later, can get involved and govern ourselves.

Villages raise children…tides lift boats…metaphors abound. I’ve always loved poetry and metaphors. And I’m learning to love numbers and data. One of my favorite explanations of how words and numbers do the same thing is from Ann-Marie McDonald, a Canadian writer.

A recent book by Chris Benner and Manual Pastor, Just Growth, uses numbers to tell a story of progressive social improvement. The authors ask whether there are U.S. cities planning for economic growth that closes the racial and income gaps in our country.

Their first and only question is “[h]ow economic prosperity and social inclusion come together, specifically the political, policy and planning processes that allow that to happen.”

They end up finding “[f]our cases that emerged as performing relatively well on both growth and equity in the 1980s and 1990s” The Northeast Florida region is a “growth with equity region.” The other regions named in Just Growth are Kansas City, Nashville, and Columbus.

So what are these “[p]atterns of growth and equity” they found in these four regions? They looked at specific data suggesting poverty decreased, racial inequities decreased, and more people earned degrees as economic growth occurred. The markers of increased equity include: percent of people at poverty level, concentration of high poverty in a few census tracts that are predominantly African-American, the median black income relative to median white income, and whether more people are college-educated. They looked at one time span— from 1980 through 2007. And Jacksonville is one place that rose to the top.

“According to the Brookings Institution, Jacksonville was the tenth best metro area in the United States (amongst the 100 largest metros) at preserving its middle class; although the share of middle-class households dropped by an average of 10.7 percentage points between 1970 and 2005, in Jacksonville it declined by only 3.9 percentage points.”

And why is Jacksonville able to ensure more people benefit from overall economic prosperity? Lots of reasons. And one of those reasons is because Jacksonville has JCCI.

It goes back, actually, to democratic citizenship. It goes back to the roots of JCCI. The researchers found that JCCI, over the years, has created a culture of collaboration between the sectors working together in the civil society.

The reason this book singles out JCCI is because we get all the players to the table and ask questions from citizens’ points-of-view. And that’s rare.

Jacksonville has had the benefit of consistent and trusted citizen-based planning over 38 years. Because of this, people expect to work together and plan for everyone to get in the boat. We know we can collaborate and get right to it.

And what about the Great Recession? The researchers asked that question, too. “Did our categorizations hold up in recent years— and, in particular, how did our case study metro regions fare in the Great Recession?” Well, Jacksonville hasn’t been as strong a community in terms of maintaining equity through the Great Recession. “Jacksonville seems to be an exception to the rule that our earlier categorizations” suggest. “However, that seems to be a function of being in Florida”— after all, ground zero for the housing crisis was in Florida.

Looking at the eight largest Florida metro areas during the Great Recession, the researchers found that Jacksonville was second best in terms of employment growth and above the median in terms of worsening poverty (poverty did not grow in Northeast Florida as fast as it did elsewhere in Florida).

Just Growth is saying, by way of its analysis of data, that Jacksonville is a good community where residents are working together so everyone thrives. Let’s be proud of that.

Every inquiry at JCCI involves 6 months of research which is available to all interested and concerned citizens. All of the supporting research for Children: 1-2-3 is here at the inquiry blog: http://children123.jcci.org/

Documents include every speaker's presentation, lots of interesting articles that were given to inquiry participants each week, and more posts on relevant topics.

So if you're looking for what led up to the inquiry report, you're going to find it there.

I’ve just learned about this idea of civil society. Last year I would have told you it had to do with garden parties and women curtseying. Now I know better.

An example of civil society is when a corporation sends workers to a school to mentor students. The private sector corporation is working with the local government’s school to educate students. Or it can be when a homeless shelter gets a grant and private donations to keep people off the streets. Food banks, clothes closets, and sliding scale health services are places where citizens, private business and the government come together to improve a community.

It’s not just about poor people. Everyone participates in civil society. Civic organizations, sports associations, clubs (yes even yacht clubs) are organizations using public and private resources to improve lives. Civil society is the time and place where community starts.

One of the best local spokespeople for the role of civil society is Sherry Magill, President of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. Below is an excerpt of an interview from the Jacksonville Daily Record. She speaks directly to that part of Jacksonville that brings government, citizens, and the private sector together: Jacksonville’s phenomenal nonprofit sector.

Magill: [I]f you make minimum wage in Florida, you have to work 97 hours a week. That’s two full-time jobs to afford a two-bedroom apartment. A lot has happened over the past four years to working people that is very troubling and very difficult for them to climb out of….What’s happening to the organizations that serve them? This is recent Duval County information — 49 percent of our local nonprofits this year are operating in the red. That’s up from 42 percent. It’s not alarming for an organization to operate a little bit in the red once every three years. But for this increase in the number that are really, really struggling, I find challenging.

I find it challenging, too. Nonprofits are where our arts, culture, human services, and social safety net are founded. Civil society is big: it’s all those libraries, schools, meeting rooms, nonprofits, and service clubs. It’s the key to maintaining a democracy where everyone can have a voice and a place at the table. In countries that want more democratic institutions, they specifically focus on libraries, for instance. One of the building blocks of a strong civil society is a public library system where citizens have access to information they need, meet and plan with other people, and learn.

Yes, information and self-education are done through corporate and independent bookstores and paid websites. However, it’s a public library that aims to level the playing field and provide access to information regardless of income. That is why public funds, our taxpayer dollars, make libraries possible. And why philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie and Betsy Lovett donate to public libraries. It’s also why JCCI staff has plenty to say about our recent Community Works inquiry, which explores options for stable funding for the Jacksonville Public Library. See what civil society can accomplish. Check out the final report now.

“Confusion to the enemy”— frequent toast made by Ed Ball, namesake of downtown Jacksonville office building and Northeast Florida business leader

Bill 2012-296 is a hot debate. During City Hall debates of the bill, citizens referred to JCCI research— both sides referred to our work to make opposing points. As with much of JCCI’s work, two different people will interpret the same facts and arrive at conflicting conclusions. And sometimes the facts are used in unexpected ways. The important thing is that JCCI’s research and analyses are being used right now in discussions about whether to include sexual orientation and gender identity in the City’s anti-discrimination law. See the facts for yourself and decide. And thank you for supporting many years’ worth of community research!

When I was 22 years old, I was very happy to not live in a big city even though rural, small, quiet places have a reputation for close-mindedness. My aspiration was to live in Portland, ME, population 63,000 because it is a beautiful city on a bay, my friends lived there, and I could afford it. One day in 1986, I was reading a gay newspaper published in Portland, and a letter printed there stuck in my mind ever since then. Basically, the letter challenged all the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people reading the paper with this:

Yeah, go ahead and pack your boxes. Start packing for Boston, New York, or San Francisco. See how that feels. And let those boxes sit in the corner for a week. Do you really want to leave? Or are you running scared? Be honest with yourself. Because if you’re running scared, go right ahead and do that. Just admit that you’re doing it. Or stay. Stay and fight.

I definitely took some of those words to heart. It became important to me to read, write, and learn for the sake of changing minds and fighting for the right to live my life. I worked on lesbian newsletters, gay newspapers, with LGBT teachers, students, youth, in Maine, New York, and Florida. At the same time, I didn’t take those words to heart because for the next 14 years I kept running. And at age 36, I was living in a matchbox in Orlando, wondering where else I could move to. That year I moved back to Jacksonville— the very place that I really didn’t like. I had to be more guarded here than in New York. The community, as represented in the newspaper, parties I went to, events, and meetings, seemed to disrespect gay people.

I landed back here for lots of reasons, including the fact that I was tired of packing and unpacking, and I knew after 9 months of Orlando that it would not be my home. In a sense, I still had some boxes half-packed on my second tour of duty in Jacksonville. I wasn’t home yet.

At that time, the light at the end of the tunnel was my dear friends. They are a lesbian couple that had just become moms. In 2000, they needed a little extra backup support raising an infant and a toddler. Their boys are now 13 and 14 years old and when Florida allowed lesbians to adopt, they became a legal family. My partner and I live two streets away from them now.

Something incredible happened in 2000. I started working at JCCI, where I could see how community change is possible. As my work at JCCI deepened, my conviction that Jacksonville is my home deepened. And anyone who has lived here since the early 90’s knows that Jacksonville is a much different place than it was then.

I’m learning (well, very slowly) to stop running scared. JCCI is the place for me, and as each year passes, I see how Jacksonville progresses. JCCI is the place for learning how and why Jacksonville progresses.

JCCI is not magic. It cannot change society or turn the battleship on a dime. What it can do is create the time and place for citizens to get involved in the wide world of passionate, community activism.

You, dear reader, are so lucky. Because right now JCCI is scaling up higher than anyone would have imagined back in 2000, when I started working here. Check out what JCCI did in San Antonio last year and fasten your seatbelts, because we’re doing it here this fall.

Ain’t skeered.