For Release July 2, 2009
Citiwire.net
TAMPA — Meeting here in mid-June, the panel of judges for the 60th All America Cities awards–America’s premier civic recognition program–were in for a big surprise. Of 29 cities making presentations, a group of 25 teens and near-teens from Richmond, Ind., clearly stole the show.
The young people, a rainbow of races and sizes, not only made Richmond’s 10-minute case to be a winner, but arrested attention with their powerfully mature responses to questions.
The build-up had been Richmond’s effort to envision its future and prove its worth to be an All-America City. Adult civic leaders had been activist enough: reacting to a 2007 Johns Hopkins University report calling Richmond “a dropout factory,” they’d inaugurated a Third Grade Reading Academy for early intervention. Two-thirds of third graders reading below grade level had signed up, with scores shortly rising by 50 percent.
But as the process rolled out, the 12-to-18 crowd–some 100 of them–seemed to be the chief civic agitators. And proud of it: as 15-year old Sophie Ottoni-Wilhelm told the jury, “We’re the backbone and also the brains of this effort.” Richmond Mayor Sally Hutton was on hand to help make the city’s case, but she committed the rare political act of staying back in the shadows.
Derek Okubo, senior vice president of the National Civic League, which produces the All-America City event, confirmed the kids were in charge even in rehearsals for their presentation.
While supporting the Third Grade Academy, for example, the young people had gone upstream with their own solutions, tapping what they believed was pent-up motivation to be more involved in both school and community. They had persuaded hundreds of their friends and acquaintances to participate in performing arts events.
“What really got my attention,” said jury member Christine Benero, head of the Mile High United Way in Denver, “was the energy that went into KidFest” –a month-long celebration of the efforts the Richmond young people were making in their community. Adults from the mayor’s office, from the Wayne County Historical Museum, Earlham College and the Richmond State Hospital lent a hand, but seemed to respect the teenagers’ ability to take charge.
KidFest started with a 90-unit moonlight parade that attracted over 2,000 people–more than five percent of Richmond’s total population. Among the results of the entrepreneurial talent invested in the project: start-up of a new local magnet school oriented to entrepreneurship.
The All-America City award occasions invariably produce cheerful but fervent competition among finalist city delegations seeking one of the ten prized annual awards. The lobbies and corridors of the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel and Marinasaw swarms of delegates, adults and youth mixed, each group easily identified by brightly colored T-shirts that shouted their city’s claim as a truly great place.
Anyone wandering into that Grand Ballroom on awards night would have felt the energy as the suspense over the final winners grew. After three days of listening to each other’s stories, all 29 were convinced they were winners. The announcement of each winner drew yelps of praise and thunderous applause. Yet the miracle is: even those not leaving with one of the ten awards consistently said they got so much out of the experience that they also felt like winners.
The event itself was something of a cross between a high school pep rally and a political convention. Delegations sitting together. Signs and banners. Whoops and yells at every announcement. When called out, winning teams march in the aisles and up on to the stage.
Winning delegations were high-fiving and hugging–public officials and grassroots activists, people of all colors, prosperous people, poor people, united by what they’d done in common. It’s America as it might be: a people united by common purpose and deeply felt emotion. We’ve all seen a facsimile of this formula at a major sports event when the home team makes a dramatic comeback.
But sports do not spell the future of the country. Kids do. Just when you think the country might come apart, the All America Cities competition delivers a yearly, youthful jolt of civic hope. A 12-year old African American boy from that Richmond delegation, Jeffrey Caldwell, summed it up when he said “We’re not just the future, we’re the present too.”
Also among the 2009 All-America City winners: Big places like Phoenix, which took on its twin bogeymen of an underdeveloped downtown and loss of open spaces to sprawl; Wichita, Kansas, which staged a massive public engagement process involving thousands, with over 500 organizations then taking responsibility for an action agenda; and much smaller Inglewood, Calif., squeezed in by the massive LAX airport, which successfully persuaded the airport–using litigation as the last cudgel–to spend a quarter billion dollars insulating homes from LAX’ noise. Also in the winners’ circle: Fort Wayne, Ind.; Albany, N.Y.; Statesville, N.C.; Somerville, Mass.; Kinston, N.C.; and Caroline County, Va.
Curtis Johnson is president of the Citistates Group. He served on the 2009 AAC jury and is a past member of the National Civic League board of directors. His e-mail address is cjohnson@citistates.com.
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