WCSC Seminar – Spring 2021
Course Access Dates: Students from 12/19/2020 until 4/28/2024; Faculty from 7/22/2020 until 4/28/2024
Weekly outline
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Read for Tuesday:
Complete Enneagram test and be prepared to discuss your results.
Pearce, J. N. (2010). Brookland: Something in the Air. In K. Schneider Smith (Ed.), Washington at Home (pp. 378–391). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Also in binder]
Walker, R. (2019, Jun. 3). 10 Ways to Change How You Interact With Your City. Next City.
Advice from Past Groups [in binder]Read for Wednesday:
(Read only Executive Summary, pp. VII-X.) Kijakazi, K., Atkins, R. M. B., Paul, M., Price, A. E., Hamilton, D., & Darity Jr., W. (2016). The color of wealth in the nation’s capital. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
12 Inspiring Public Parks & Gardens in Washington, DC. Washington.org
Muyskens, J., Emamdjomeh, A., & Siddiqui, F. (2017, April 17). Here’s where D.C. public transit can take you — and who gets left behind. The Washington Post.
WCSC Community Service Internships [in binder]
McBride, K. (2015, May 28). Advice for summer interns: Don't screw this up. Poynter.org. [Also in binder]
What they don’t tell you about jobs, internships, and your career. (Adapted from Eric Woodard’s convocation and workshop at Eastern Mennonite University on October 23, 2019.) [Also in binder]
5 Tips to Succeed in Your Remote Internship. (2020) Symba.) [Also in binder]
6 Ways to Make the Most of a Remote Internship. Handshake. [Also in binder]
Read for Thursday:
Group Jobs [in binder]The WCSC Handbook [in binder]
Badger, E. & Bui, Q. (2020, July 10). Riots Long Ago, Luxury Living Today. The New York Times.
Gringlas, S. (2017, Jan. 16). Old Confronts New In A Gentrifying D.C. Neighborhood. NPR.
Mathuria, S. (2019, March 28). Place & privilege: Telling stories about places that aren’t yours. Progressive City.
Read for Friday:
Black, R. Global coronavirus pandemic could help the homeless or hurt them more. (2020) Street Sense Media.Langelan, M. (2017). You Too? Here's what to do. [Also in binder]
Langelan, M. (2017). Turning Anger into Change: 30 Ways to Stop a Bigot. [Also in binder]
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Week 2 (1/21) - People, place, and capital: Social, physical, and economic space in the urban landscape (UL)
How and why do places change? Socially? Physically? Economically?
Read:
Kashino, M. M. (2018, April 4). The reinvention of 14th Street: A history. Washingtonian.
Zukin, S. (2008). Consuming authenticity: From outposts of difference to means of exclusion. Cultural Studies, 22(5), 724–748.
Field journal UL-1: Identify and photograph a building that appears to have been recently built or developed. Explain how you know. What types of authenticity did the developers or owners seek to reflect in the building? To whom would this building be attractive and why? As you read the Kashino piece, do you see capital investment driving social and cultural change on 14th Street, or is it the other way around?
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What neighborhood is this? What makes community? And whose story is that to tell?
Read:
de Souza Briggs, X. (2004). Social capital: Easy beauty or meaningful resource? Journal of the American Planning Association, 70(2), 151–158.
Hwang, J. (2016). The social construction of a gentrifying neighborhood: Reifying and redefining identity and boundaries in inequality. Urban Affairs Review, 52(1), 98–128.
Cohen, M. (2019, March 19). Community mapping: Building power and agency with data. Data@Urban.
Field journal PPC-1: Look up the boundaries of the Brookland or Michigan Park neighborhood—Google Maps is definitely an option but see if you can find boundaries drawn up somewhere else (civic association, historical society, etc.). Go visit one of these boundaries. Photograph the boundary line. Why do you think it functions as a neighborhood boundary? Do things appear different on either side? Would you know you were leaving one neighborhood and entering another, if you were just walking down the street? What are examples of significant boundaries from the places you are from? What roles did they play? Were they visible in the physical landscape?
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What shapes food access in our communities? Why do some places not have grocery stores? Should we be growing more of our own food?
Watch:
Soul Fire Farm (2016). Soul Fire Farm: Feeding the Soul, Growing Community.
Read:
Hunger Report 2020: The State of Food Insecurity in Greater Washington. (2020, Oct. 5). Capital Area Food Bank.
Food Access & Food Security in the District of Columbia: Responding to the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. (2020). Office of the DC Food Policy Director.
Penniman, L. (2017, April 27). 4 Not-So-Easy Ways to Dismantle Racism in the Food System. Yes.
Massey, B. (2017, February 27). D.C.’s urban farms wrestle with gentrification and displacement. Civil Eats.
Field journal PPC-2: Identify the five closest grocery stores or supermarkets to the WCSC house. Write up a transportation plan for getting to each location without a car. Report the quickest option. What things should government do to increase access to healthy food for lower income families?
Due by 11:00am:
The neighborhood in physical space. Submit on Moodle. (UL)
Speaker: Lillie Rosen, Deputy Director, DC Greens
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Why do people live where they do? What are the consequences? Who’s responsible, and what should be done about it?
Read:
Butler, S. M. & Grabinsky, J. (2015, March 24). Segregation and concentrated poverty in the nation’s capital. Brookings.
Rothstein, R. (2015, March 30). Should we force integration on those who don’t want it?, and other commonplace questions about race relations. Economic Policy Institute.
Dreier, P. (2015, May 7). The revitalization trap. Shelterforce.
Mock, B. (2015, May 25). The failures and merits of place-based initiatives. CityLab.
Sharkey, P. (2014, January). Making our assumptions about integration explicit. The Dream Revisited: Why Integration?
Field journal UL-2: Spend 15 minutes in a public space where you can see and be seen by others. Keep a tally of the people you see, counting them either as “more similar to me than different” or “more different than similar.” Take a picture of the public space and include it in your field journal. Have you more often lived in places where you felt similar to most people around you or where you felt different than most people around you? What are some of the consequences of a society where people live separate from people who are different than them, whether that separation is chosen or the outcome of structural factors?
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What is gentrification and why does it happen? Is it a good thing? A bad thing? A natural process and thus morally neutral? Who benefits and how?
Read:
(Read only pp. 3-13 and pp. 75-104.) Hyra, D. S. (2017). Race, class, and politics in the cappuccino city. University of Chicago Press.
Crockett, Jr, S. A. (2012, August 3). The Brixton: It’s new, happening and another example of African-American historical “swagger-jacking.” The Washington Post.
Franke-Ruta, G. (2012, August 10). The Politics of the Urban Comeback: Gentrification and Culture in D.C. The Atlantic.
Field journal UL-3: Find and take a picture of a building, signage, or public art that reflects a particular racial or cultural heritage. What role do you think that representation is playing (or is intended to play) in this object and the ways people relate to it? How does Hyra’s idea of “Black branding” compare to what Crockett means by “historical swagger-jacking?” What is Franke-Ruta’s argument? What parts of these three perspectives do you find most compelling?
Speaker: Dominic Moulden, long-time Resource Organizer, ONE DC
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Who pays for community development in places with inadequate resources? Whose responsibility is this?
Read:
von Hoffman, A. (2012). The past, present, and future of community development in the United States. In N. O. Andrews & D. J. Erickson (Eds.), Investing in what works for America’s communities: Essays on people, place, and purpose (pp. 10–54). San Francisco, CA: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Low Income Investment Fund.
Field journal PPC-3: If you had unlimited funds to work with, what changes would you most prioritize in the Brookland neighborhood, or some other part of the city? Take some photographs or record audio or video that support your characterization of this need for change. Now imagine you don’t have unlimited funds, but still want to see this change realized. What strategies would be most appropriate (e.g., organizing neighbors, writing a grant to convince a private philanthropy to give, policies that sweeten the deal for private investment, etc.)? Referencing the von Hoffman reading, when in the past hundred years have these strategies been used?
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How is health shaped by where you live or by the color of your skin? Why?
Watch:
Jones, C. (2018, April 18). Dr. Camara Jones Explains the Cliff of Good Health. Urban Institute.
Read:
(Read only pp. 1-23) Galvez, M., Leopold, J., Okeke, C., & Oneto, A. D. (2019). Three decades of Mary’s Center’s social change model. Urban Institute.
Jackson, M. (2016). The health of the African American community in the District of Columbia: Disparities and recommendations. Washington, DC: Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies.
Arnold, J. (2019). Providence Hospital closes after 158 years | 'I think it will put a lot of people in jeopardy'. WUSA9.com.
CDC (2016). CDC Fact Sheet: Challenges in HIV Prevention
Field journal PPC-4: Look up the locations of Federally Qualified Health Centers in Washington, DC at https://www.fqhc.org/find-an-fqhc and capture a screenshot for your journal. Describe the map: where are FQHCs located and where are they not located? Why do low-income communities and communities of color bear disproportionate health burdens in our society? What are the implications?
Speaker: Elizabeth Egan, Physician Assistant, Whitman Walker Health
Due by 11:00am:
The neighborhood in social and cultural space. Submit on Moodle. (UL)
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What is power? And how do we increase the power of a group of people?
Watch:
America Will Be - Episode 1: Uniting a Movement. Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. (2018).
Read:
Power and social change. Grassroots Policy Project.
Sen, R. (2003). Introduction: Community organizing—Yesterday and today. In Stir it up: Lessons in community organizing and advocacy (pp. xliii–lxv). Jossey-Bass.
Field journal UL-4: Walk around Brookland. Find and take a picture of some type of evidence that neighbors are working together to accomplish something. (Or at the very least, are inviting their neighbors to work together on a project.) In your own words, describe the three faces of power discussed in the reading from the Grassroots Policy Project. Have you ever been involved in intentionally exercising one of these dimensions of power?
Due by 11:00am:
Community need paper. Submit on Moodle. (PP&C) -
What is affordable housing and where does it come from? Who paid for that house you just bought? What’s foreclosure and how does it affect communities?
Read:
Wogan, J. B. (2015, February). Why D.C.’s affordable housing protections are losing a war with economics. Governing.
Cohen, R. M. (2019, November 14). D.C. is rapidly gentrifying and the fate of its affordable housing hangs in the balance. Washington City Paper.
Schuster, H. & Bullard, G. (2020, September 29). Tenant Activism in D.C. Has Surged During The Pandemic. DCist.
Field journal PPC-5: Identify a house in Brookland that appears to have been built or remodeled recently. Record the address of the property and take a picture. Use Zillow.com to look up the date and price of the two most recent sales and report these in your journal. Drawing on the readings and your own experience, why do you think the DC housing market doesn’t provide enough housing that is affordable to lower-income residents? Is housing affordability a problem in your hometown? Why or why not?
Speaker: Steve Glaude, President & CEO, Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development (CNHED)
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We see racial difference reflected in space, but can the geography of our society actually produce racial identities?
Read:
Delaney, D. (2002). The space that race makes. The Professional Geographer, 54(1), 6–14.
Lipsitz, G. (2007). The racialization of space and the spatialization of race. Landscape Journal, 26(1), 10–23.
Field journal UL-5: Is Brookland a racialized space? A white space? A black space? How do you know? What evidence can you provide (descriptive or photographic)? Look up and report the racial demographics of the neighborhood using statisticalatlas.com. In the reading for today, Delaney writes: “[E]lements of the social (race, gender, and so on) are not simply reflected in spatial arrangements; rather, spatialities are regarded as constituting and/or reinforcing aspects of the social” (p. 7). And Lipsitz writes: “The lived experience of race has a spatial dimension, and the lived experience of space has a racial dimension” (p. 12). What do these statements mean? What are examples from your own experience that might demonstrate these dynamics?
Due by 11:00am:
The neighborhood in economic space. Submit on Moodle. (UL)
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Who controls the investments that grow our communities? Who controls the profits?
Watch:
Own the change: Building economic democracy one worker co-op at a time. (2015).
Read:
Nembhard, J. G. (2014, October 2). The cooperative solution. Shelterforce.
Bockman, J. (2016). Home rule from below: The cooperative movement in Washington, DC. In D. Hyra & S. Prince (Eds.), Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington, D.C. (pp. 66–85). Routledge.
Field journal PPC-6: Using internet research, identify a credit union, food co-op, or worker co-op in the DC area. How long has it been open? What community does it serve? What objectives does it pursue? Explain in your own words how the organization or enterprise democratizes capital and profits.
Speaker: Bianca Vazquez, Program Director, Beloved Community Incubator -
Due by 11:00am:
Neighborhood case study draft. Submit on Moodle and bring two hard copies to class. (UL) -
Why do poorer students and students of color have a hard time accessing quality public education? What should we be doing about it?
Read:
Hannah-Jones, N. (2014, December 19). School segregation, the continuing tragedy of Ferguson. ProPublica.
Naimark, S. (2016, February 4). Gentrification and public schools: It’s complicated. Shelterforce.
Toch, T. (2019, March 20). The Lottery That’s Revolutionizing D.C. Schools. The Washington Post.
King, M. & Gaudiano, N. (2020, September 23). The pandemic could widen the achievement gap. A generation of students is at risk. Politico.
Response blog PPC-7: Find and photograph a charter school in DC. Look up the school’s website and report when it was started, by whom, and around what objectives. If you can, figure out what the building was used for prior to becoming a charter school. More broadly, what are the implications of racial segregation in our public school systems? How does DC’s school lottery seek to address these issues?
Speaker: Dwanna Nicole, Restorative Justice Partnership -
Whose place is this and who belongs here? How do you know?
Read:
Chason, R. (2017, July 21). Field wars: Organized league clashes with pickup players in a gentrifying neighborhood. The Washington Post.
Moulden, D., Squires, G. D., & Theresa, A. (2018, Oct. 10). The right to stay put. Shelterforce.
Summers, B.T. (2020, April 27). Authenticity and “Post-Chocolate” Cool in a Rapidly Gentrifying Washington, D.C. Next City.
Field journal UL-6: How do you know who belongs somewhere and who doesn’t? What gives somebody the right to stay put—or to keep playing soccer where and how they’ve been playing? Is it appropriate for a government to take steps to protect long-term residents from the displacing impact of gentrification and rising property values? Why? -
Due by 11:00am:
Final neighborhood case study. Submit on Moodle. (UL)
Community need map. Bring to class. (PP&C)