Conversations in Community Change Voices from the Field Edited by Max O. Stephenson Jr. and Cathy Grimes The Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance launched an experiment in 2011 called the Community Voices initiative. Community Voices was a student-led group devoted to bringing graduate students and faculty from diverse backgrounds into thoughtful dialogue with leaders who have devoted their professional lives to spurring or assisting with community change. This book is the product of those conversations. Conversations in Community Change features 12 interviews conducted by members of Community Voices, since renamed the Community Change Collaborative (CCC). The interviewees are leaders who have worked in many different contexts across the public, nonprofit, and for- profit sectors to instigate meaningful change (democratic social, political and economic) in their communities. The animating idea behind these interviews is that those in search of peaceful democratic social change, especially amidst ongoing economic and social dislocation, have much to learn from one another within the United States and internationally, and at all levels of governance. Among the topics and initiatives discussed in the book: • Efforts to secure civil and human rights for groups that have historically experienced discrimination, • How food system pioneers are seeking to make alternatives to the present corporate-dominated food production framework real for growers and consumers alike, • How the arts can open up new public and private spaces to permit reconsideration of otherwise dominant assumptions and thinking, • The social exigencies created by capitalism’s constant economic dislocation and roiling, Ultimately, readers will come away from the book with a fuller appreciation for the complexities of democratic change—and the need for modesty, patience, and perseverance among those who would seek to lead or encourage such efforts. Virginia Tech Institute for Cover Illustration: public domain image Policy and Governance in ISBN 9781949373387 90000 > association with 9 781949 373387 Conversations in Community Change Other Books by Max O. Stephenson Jr. Fragile Foundations and Enduring Challenges: Essays on Democratic Politics and Governance, 124 essays. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech Publishing, 2019. ISBN: 978-1-949373-09-7 (PDF), ISBN: 978-1-949373-08-0 (ePub), ISBN: 978-1-949373-07-3 (paperback), 560 pp. RE: Reflections and Explorations Volume II: A Forum for Deliberative Dialogue. Editor, with Lyusyena Kirakosyan. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech Publishing, 2017. ISBN: 978-0-9963838-3-7 (PDF), ISBN: 978-0-9963838-4-4 (ePub), ISBN: 978-0-9963838-5-1 (paperback), 419 pp. RE: Reflections and Explorations: Essays on Public Policy and Governance. Editor, with Lyusyena Kirakosyan, Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance, 2015. ISBN: 978-0-9963838-1-3 (PDF), ISBN: 978-0-9963838-0-6 (ePub), ISBN: 978-0-9963838-2-0 (paperback), 357 pp. Arts and Community Change: Exploring Cultural Development Policies, Practices and Dilemmas. Editor, with Scott Tate. Oxford, UK: Routledge Publishers, 2015. ISBN: 978-1-13-802434-2. Available in hardcover, paperback and e-book formats, 258 pp. Building Walls and Dissolving Borders: The Challenges of Alterity, Community and Securitizing Space. Editor with Laura Zanotti. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishers, 2013. ISBN: 978-1-4094-3835-9. Available in hardcover, paperback and e-book formats, 218 pp. Peacebuilding through Community-Based NGOs: Paradoxes and Possibilities. With Laura Zanotti. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2012. ISBN: 978-156549-426-8. Available in hardcover and paperback formats, 128 pp. Exploring Low-Income Housing Delivery Systems: Roles of Nonprofit Organizations in the United States. With Sang Ok Choi, Hye Seung Kim and Sung Je Jeon. Seoul, Korea: Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements, 2010. 118 pp. Conversations in Community Change Voices from the Field Edited by Max O. Stephenson Jr. and Cathy Grimes Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance in association with BLACKSBURG· VIRGINIA Copyright © 2021 Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance Individual entries copyright © 2021 respective authors First published 2021 by the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance in association with Virginia Tech Publishing. Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance 201 West Roanoke St. Blacksburg, VA 24060 Virginia Tech Publishing University Libraries at Virginia Tech 560 Drillfield Dr. Blacksburg, VA 24061 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Note to users: This work may contain components (e.g., photographs, illustrations, or quotations) not covered by the license. Every effort has been made to identify these components but ultimately it is your responsibility to independently evaluate the copyright status of any work or component part of a work you use, in light of your intended use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, California, 94042, USA. ISBN: 978-1-949373-39-4 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-949373-40-0 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-949373-38-7 (paperback) DOI: https://doi.org/10.21061/conversations/ 1. Political science. 2. Public policy 3. Community development. 4. Social change dynamics. 5. So- cial Movements. 6. Democracy. 7. Electronic books. I. Stephenson, Max O. II. Title: Conversations in Community Change. III. Title: Voices from the Field Every effort has been made to contact and acknowledge copyright owners, but the authors would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to their attention, so that corrections may be published in future editions. Dedication For Jessica Whose Joy and Wonder Provided An Enduring Example to All Who Encountered Her MOS For Christy Johnson, Ted Grimes, and Meaghan Simonich, And for Sierra, Elizabeth, Russell, Aiden and Macrina CG Contents Acknowledgments ix Foreword xi Introduction 1 Grappling with the Vicissitudes of Community Change Max O. Stephenson Jr. Chapter 1: Andy Morikawa 10 The Evolution of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance Community Change Collaborative Part I: Exploring the Dynamics of Community Change Chapter 2: Amy Brooks 23 Chapter 3: Frank Dukes 40 Chapter 4: Amy Goldstein 57 Chapter 5: Ethan Kent 68 Chapter 6: Pam McMichael 85 Chapter 7: Penny Franklin 99 Chapter 8: Brad Stephens / Carolyn Zelikow 116 Part II: Exploring Community Change Via Food Systems Chapter 9: Rick Cavey 135 Chapter 10: Anthony Flaccavento 154 Chapter 11: Tracy Kunkler 172 Chapter 12: Jeanette Abi-Nader 190 Afterword 211 The Art of the Interview Cathy Grimes Interviewee Biographies 214 Interviewer Biographies 217 Editors’ Biographies 224 Index 226 Acknowledgments As we note within, this book is the product of more than a decade of thoughtful conversations with individuals who have devoted their professional lives to spurring or assisting with community change efforts across a disparate array of subject areas. We are indebted to all of those who gave so freely of their time to the Community Change Collaborative (CCC) at Virginia Tech. Without their generosity of spirit and engagement in their vital work and in this enterprise, this volume would not have been possible. We cannot name them all here, but suffice it to say, we cannot thank them sufficiently for their willingness to share their experiences and insights. We also wish to thank the dozens of graduate students from multiple academic programs at Virginia Tech whose intellectual curiosity has sustained the Collaborative from its inception. Those students have selected interviewees, found time in their busy schedules to participate in planning sessions, to attend talks and roundtables and to interview the individuals (and many others besides) who appear in these pages. Their passion and acumen are on full display in this book, as they have been from the start of the CCC learning experiment. This volume, like the broader initiative from which it has evolved, is the product of their drive and imagination and we thank them. Collectively, they offer an example of the highest possibilities of higher education. We wish to thank Dr. Lyusyena Kirakosyan for her willingness to offer a Foreword for this work and for her assistance, too, in helping us design this book and bring it to fruition. Max Stephenson wishes to thank Catherine Grimes for the countless hours she spent ensuring the accuracy of the texts of these interviews, for her unflagging good will and for her superb editorial sense. Cathy Grimes wishes to thank Max Stephenson for his insights, his deep regard for voice and clarity and his unending patience as we edited the transcripts of these interviews. Finally, we owe deep thanks to Andy Morikawa, long time Senior Fellow at the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and an accomplished nonprofit organization professional, who has long engaged in, and thoughtfully pondered the dynamics of community change. Andy has been Acknowledgments | ix involved with the CCC initiative throughout its existence and has unselfishly shared his time and talents with students and faculty during those years. More particularly, he has alone ensured the excellent audio archive of the interviews in this series by dint of his outstanding audio engineering capabilities. This book could never have been conceived, let alone realized, without his contributions. Finally, we