With a grant of 40 trees from Openlands, along with their gift of
supervised installation and 3 new Blacks in Green™ scholarship graduates from
their latest TreeKeepers course, we are baptizing our newest vacant lot
acquisition with the planting of a fruit and nut orchard, advancing the West
Woodlawn Botanic Garden & Village Farm Initiative. Twenty trees will be
planted in our orchard at 6044 S. St. Lawrence - acquired through the city's
Large Lot Program - and 20 in nearby parkways, including 4-6 on 61st Street to
launch our 61st Street Tree Canopy Project.
Our Chief Gardening Officer Duane Jarrett - the botanic genius behind
all our garden work - has prepared the lot landscape design below [adjustments
for different trees, pending], on which we will also build a multi-unit
residence, thanks to the support of Alderman Cochran. Pictures of our first
garden - a Sustainability Teaching Garden installed at the West Woodlawn Gateway
of 60th & St. Lawrence are included for context. The larger context for our
work is also described below.
Many thanks to Mr. Hal Eason, BIG's Streets & Sanitation Ward
Superintendent, for the most caring, courteous, timely, and generous support -
always - with our green infrastructure work in West Woodlawn. Huge thanks also
to Openlands and to the City of Chicago Bureau of Forestry, without whom our
green infrastructure work would not be proceeding; and to Freshwater Future,
Christy Webber, IDNR, and a dozen hearty neighbors whose early support helped us
mount such a strong start.
Friends like you - committed to community wealth - are needed. In a
single lifetime, green and healthy neighborhoods for black middle-income
families have nearly vanished in America.
BIG's mission is self-sustaining black communities everywhere. Our
goal is "The City of Villages" - where every household can walk-to-work,
walk-to-shop, walk-to-learn, and walk-to-play. We authored and teach The 8
Principles of Green-Village-Building™ and Grannynomics™ across the country to
foster a transition - guided by residents of black communities - to
"walkable-villages" - sustainable one square-mile at a time, anchored by
neighbor-owned businesses and buildings, and driven by the conservation
lifestyle...the beautiful life. Your capacity-building support helps us help
ourselves.
And without your help on systemic planning in advance, blacks are
certain to be displaced from our Great Migration communities across America,
destined for permanent underclass status. As you know, historically, blacks are
moved out whenever amenities and market forces attract higher income residents.
In America and around the world, extreme black/white wealth disparity,
structural in nature and perpetuated by many of today's policies, practices, and
payments, ensures that blacks can never build and maintain high-quality,
center-city neighborhoods. Attempts at transformation are typically designed
and supervised by outside professionals who earn the fees to manage the
programs, and take the profits from increased land values. Equity is enshrined
as a seat at the table, fed by a friend - when owning the table, making the
meal, and inviting the guests is clearly more power-filled!
BIG is doing the new work needed to end the old ways: whole-system
thinking, driven by neighbors, designed to increase household income, while
building/circulating community wealth, and establishing resilience. Working at
the intersection of environment + economy, BIG™ has undertaken a whole-system
solution for the whole-system problem common to black communities everywhere - a
rare approach for vulnerable communities.
Rather than constraining attractiveness by making our community "just
green enough" to avoid gentrification, or by looking the other way while
increasing costs slowly turn West Woodlawn into Hyde Park, together with you and
our network of subject matter experts, we can create a national model for an
environmental/economic oasis with a local living economy as a greenhouse gas
reduction strategy...maintaining its cultural character through community
controlled development, land trusts, and benefits agreements...and leveling the
playing field with policies-practices-payments which prefer neighbor-owned
businesses and buildings. To avoid the "Hyde Park Syndrome" blacks must own a
critical mass of land and businesses, with the capital and protections to
preserve them. No other formula can save us. This is the heart
of Green-Village-Building™ - making an oasis wherever we live...restoring our
place in the world!
Making an oasis in West Woodlawn...one which preserves our heritage
as Chicago's first black middle-class neighborhood...the southernmost tip of
Bronzeville...the historic place about which the book Tight Little Island was
written...is our unique invitation to you. Especially with the prospect of The
Obama Presidential Library nestling nearby, we must bring world-class innovation
to the preservation and cultivation of heritage communities that nurture the
ascent of all black families, as they did the rise of our First Family. Thank
you for bringing your rich ideas and willing spirit to the table!
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