Jax dinner serves hope

The Dinner with a Difference held last week in Jacksonville, Florida, was a great success. We had approximately 430 attendees, many who were totally new to the study circle process of action-oriented dialogues that bring together a wide variety of people. The event brimmed with energy and allowed everyone to get a taste of a study circle session.

After the catered meal, we began by looking at a video which depicted the disparities between races in everyday life. Then we had more than 40 facilitators, each speaking with groups of 10 to 12 people each at separate tables. Everyone openly and honestly discussed the video along with their perceptions of race in Jacksonville.

At the end of the evening we had closing thoughts and a strong next-steps statement which motivated people to continue to learn about the study circle process and get more involved. Our director, Charlene Taylor Hill, summed up the event’s vision and sent everyone home with a sense of purpose. Many business, civic, and political leaders who normally would not be at this type of event were there. The biggest comments were that people now had a feeling of "hope" and that "the city has never had an event like this before.”

We are now moving forward and looking to capitalize on the success by launching more study circles, identifying potential facilitators, and establishing relationships with new coalition partners. Internally, we are moving forward in setting up our action Forums, planning a facilitator gathering to introduce Anthony Butler, the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission’s manager of education and community outreach, and establish a new focus. We are also looking to refine our coalition partner list and focus on a more specific aspect of the racial equity issue as it pertains to a particular social ill in our city. All in all we are excited about where we are and eager to move to the next step: focused action.

Lisa Stafslien works for the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, one of nine programs taking part in Everyday Democracy’s Communities Creating Racial Equity initiative. Contact her here.

If your community would like to post a report of its organizing work here at DemocracySpace, please contact blog manager Julie Fanselow. 

Comments

[Julie Fanselow]

Congratulations, Jacksonville, on your successful dinner - and also on being the first CCRE community to post a report at DemocracySpace!!

I notice you are getting some great press in Jacksonville. Here's a link to a story recently posted on our website, from The Florida Times-Union:

http://www.everyday-democracy.org/en/Article.754.aspx

and I also see a link to a related essay by Bryant Rollins:

http://www.everyday-democracy.org/en/Article.748.aspx

Keep up the great work. We'll look forward to future reports.

[Molly Barrett]

Congratulations to the Jacksonville team! You put together a great event--a wonderful foundation for your expanded effort to address racial equity in your city.

I'm sure our readers would like to know how you funded the event (did you charge admission?), how you promoted it, and how you recruited participants. Whatever you did, people really turned out. Kudos to all of you!
Molly

[Martha McCoy]

Lisa, we are so pleased to hear the great reports of things moving forward in Jacksonville!

Your words and the images capture it all... Congratulations to all of you in Jax (Anthony, Ed, Charlene, your partners) for taking on this issue in such an up-front and inclusive way. We (Everyday Democracy and all the racial equity sites around the country) are honored to be in this work with you, and now consider ourselves to have experienced Dinner with a Difference vicarously!

Martha

[Gloria Mengual]

Lisa, you noted that: Many business, civic, and political leaders who normally would not be at this type of event were there. What did your group do/say that enticed them to attend? People from communities I work with struggle to involve elected officials and business professionals in their racial equity work, often with little success. It would be great to hear what you think motivated them.

[Lisa Stafslien]

To answer the question regarding how we paid for the event, since this was our first of hopefully many annual events, we paid for the dinner out of our JHRC budget ourselves. We wanted to offer a free, open to all, public event with no admission charges to anyone. In the future, our plan to is call upon our coalition partners to assist with the funding of such activities.

[Lisa Stafslien]

On the recruitment piece, we called upon partners, other non-profit and diversity organizations as well as the Chamber of Commerce to share mailing lists and mailed invitations to thousands of citizens and community leaders in the area. We also had posters advertising the event in many public places such as libraries and finally we did a press release and conducted interviews with local radio stations.

[Anthony Butler]

One of the interesting dynamics noticed in the event is that a number of the attendees came up expressing a desire to "for the first time get involved". This was accompanied by a strong emotion of "Hope". Personally, I heard from over 5 people the comment, "We have never had an event like this by the city". This shows that we made a dent in the perception that the city is not plugged in. We are now as a team to change this emotional energy to kinetic energy. Lisa is motivating and scheduling attendees to join a Study Circle, I am working to connect with business and community leaders to forge new partnerships, and the Project Breakthrough partners (our local umbrella coalition) is looking to debrief and re-energize. Our facilitators were key to the success and really stepped up. To that end we are having a Facilitators Gathering to restate our focus and share our short term vision (based on the famous LM, we are seeing each other every day now) :)

[Julie Fanselow]

Excellent work. Thanks for the additional details, Lisa and Anthony.

Your kickoff and other recent ones in Memphis, TN, and Lynchburg, VA, appear to have all attained a real saturation point in the community, where - with all the publicity and networking - perhaps it was almost impossible for folks NOT to know what was happening and want to be a part of it. Building that sort of excitement isn't easy, even in a time of hope, so you're all to be commended for the energy you've generated.

[Amy Malick]

Congratulations on a successful event to build momentum for racial equity in Jacksonville! Lisa, you mentioned showing a video depicting disparities between races in everyday life. Was that a locally produced video? I'd love to see it, as we're exploring how communities can use video in their work.

[Sarah Kadden]

yeah jacksonville!