Feature Articles

November Issue 2000

Center For Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, NC, Heads National Project, Indivisible

This fall twelve communities across the country will be featured in an original documentary project that explores grassroots democracy at work in America. Through the distinctive visions of some of the nation's leading photographers and compelling interviews by prominent oral historians and folklorists, Indivisible: Stories of American Community provides a first-hand look at local initiatives and the people behind them, creating a unique portrait of an America moved to action.

Indivisible is a project of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, in Durham, NC, in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Indivisible is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The project encompasses a nationally touring museum exhibition, a major trade book, traveling exhibits that will circulate free postcards, and an extensive Web site. The museum exhibition premiered at the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago on Oct. 6, 2000, and will run through Nov. 26, 2000, in conjunction with a postcard exhibit at the James R. Thompson Center, also in Chicago, Oct. 5 - 19, 2000. The book, published by W.W. Norton & Company/Lyndhurst Books, and including a foreword by journalist Ray Suarez, was available nationally in bookstores Oct. 6. The project Web site (www.indivisible.org), launched concurrently with the Chicago opening, presents the Indivisible photographs and interview excerpts along with additional resources for learning more about community action. The project also includes major research archives, an educators' guide, and an instructional booklet for documenting community projects.

Using original photographs and the voices of citizens telling their own stories, Indivisible focuses on twelve local initiatives that address issues facing communities across the United States-including housing, immigration, the environment, crime prevention, health care, youth empowerment, race relations, and economic and cultural development. Photographer Lynn Davis and folklorist Jens Lund introduce us to Alaskan fishing communities along the North Pacific Coast where innovative marine conservation efforts are having an impact; photographer Reagan Louie and ethnographer Barry Dornfeld take us to North Philadelphia, where - through the hard work of community residents at the Village of Arts and Humanities - some eighty-seven abandoned properties have been converted into art parks, community gardens, education facilities, and low-income housing; and photographer Sylvia Plachy and journalist Karen Michel visit midwives and doulas - volunteers in the service of women during pregnancy, childbirth and early postpartum time at home - working to support mothers on Long Island. Among the others documented are Haitian immigrants in Delray Beach, Florida, working with local police to patrol their streets to combat drug use and crime; migrant farmworkers in Texas border towns who learn to finance and construct their own homes; and loggers, conservationists, and other residents in Montana forming a coalition on preservation and sustainable use of the forest.

Indivisible is a unique project matching documentary expression with committed grassroots community action. The creative work of project photographers and fleldworkers provides powerful testimony to personal efforts, encouraging dialogue about the importance of the individual in community life, said project co-director Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. "By amplifying the stories of local people and places, Indivisible affirms the value of community and illustrates the potential gain that comes from recognizing mutual interests and interdependence."

"The photographers, twelve distinct interpreters of American life, have given us a wealth of imagery that speaks to the texture and character of diverse communities across the country," said project co-director Trudy Wilner Stack, curator of exhibitions and collections at the Center for Creative Photography. "These artists powerfully reveal places that define our nation and people who inspire us in the search for a renewed commitment to working democracy."

"One of the Trusts' core aims is to help reconnect Americans to the communities and institutions that bind us together as a nation," said Rebecca W. Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Indivisible portrays the struggle to build our democracy at the ground level-connecting our everyday lives with our civic lives-and documents how, with hard work, it can be done."

Archived collections of Indivisible project photographs, interview tapes, and transcripts will be housed at both the University of Arizona and Duke University, providing public access to an unusually large body of work documenting a cross section of modern America. The historical value of the collection, given its grounding in a cultural perspective and the inclusion of a range of issues, places, and demographics, will engage and inform future researchers and others interested in the diversity and complexity of American civic life. Each of the twelve communities will also receive a set of photographs and interview tapes from the documentation of their initiatives.

The toll-free number of Indivisible, l-877-INDIV99, will provide the public with up-to-date project information, including upcoming museum and postcard exhibition dates and venues.

The Contributors

The twelve photographers chosen to participate in Indivisible have made considerable contributions to social history and the art of photography, and bring their own artistic viewpoint to each community site. They are Dawoud Bey, Bill Burke, Lucy Capehart, Lynn Davis, Terry Evans, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Lauren Greenfield, Joan Liftin, Reagan Louie, Danny Lyon, Sylvia Plachy, and Eli Reed. The photographers' works range in format, size, and process, from black-and-white images to vibrant color prints to photo montages.

The audio component of Indivisible is composed of excerpts from interviews with community members. Ten noted journalists, oral historians, radio producers, and folklorists conducted extensive interviews in each of the twelve communities. They are Merle Augustin, Dan Collison, Barry Dornfeld, George King, Jack Loeffler, Jens Lund, Karen Michel, Daniel Rothenberg, Jeff Whetstone, and Joe Wood. Their interviews capture the stories of American community life that accompany the photographs in the exhibitions, in the book, and on the Web site.

The Communities

The twelve communities featured in Indivisible are:

Alaskan Fishing Communities, North Pacific Coast, AK: A conservation coalition dedicated to marine resource management in a region whose traditions and livelihood are largely dependent on fishing.
Photographer: Lynn Davis Interviewer: Jens Lund

Alternatives Federal Credit Union, Ithaca, NY: A member run credit union, working to empower its members by fostering local investment, low-income bank services and programs, and economic literacy.
Photographer: Bill Burke Interviewer: Joe Wood

CHALK (Communities in Harmony Advocating for Learning and Kids), San Francisco, CA: A youth-run peer-to-peer conversation and crisis intervention phone service called Youthline.
Photographer: Lauren Greenfield Interviewer: George King

Haitian Citizens Police Academy and Roving Patrol and MAD DADS Street Patrol, Delray Beach, FL: Citizen groups that work in conjunction with local police to reduce crime, gang violence, and illegal drug use by organizing street patrols, community activities for youth, and violence reduction efforts.
Photographer: Joan Liftin Interviewer: Merle Augustin

Diné bí' íína', Inc. (Navajo Lifeways), Navajo Nation (AZ, UT, NM, CO): A collaborative program to restore interest in and understanding about traditional Navajo-Churro sheep herding, raising, and weaving processes.
Photographer: Lucy Capehart Interviewer: Jack Loeffler

Eau Claire Community Council and Eau Claire Community of Shalom, Eau Claire-North Columbia, SC: An interracial, cross-denominational network that attempts to revitalize its historic neighborhoods while addressing community problems and local needs.
Photographer: Eli Reed Interviewer: George King

HandMade in America Small Town Revitalization Project, Western North Carolina: A project dedicated to enhancing the quality of regional mountain life and culture through economic and community development strategies.
Photographer: Debbie Fleming Caffery Interviewer: Jeff Whetstone

Midwifery Practice and Doula Service at University Hospital and Medical Center, Stony Brook, NY:
An organization of community volunteers and health professionals who give support to women during labor, delivery, and in early postpartum stages.
Photographer: Sylvia Plachy Interviewer: Karen Michel

Proyecto Azteca, San Juan, Hidalgo County, TX: A grassroots housing initiative in which migrant farmworkers and other low-income residents learn skills to build and finance their own homes.
Photographer: Danny Lyon Interviewer: Daniel Rothenberg

Southwest Youth Collaborative, Chicago, IL: An organization building youth and community leadership and enrichment across a constellation of ethnically diverse neighborhoods.
Photographer: Dawoud Bey Interviewer: Dan Collison

The Village of Arts and Humanities, Philadelphia, PA: An inner-city arts and cultural organization working to rebuild community through creativity and education.
Photographer: Reagan Louie Interviewer: Barry Dornfeld

Yaak Valley Forest Community, Yaak Valley, MT: A remote forest settlement that is working to foster dialogue and consensus to address forest protection and use.
Photographer. Terry Evans Interviewer: Jens Lund

Museum Exhibition Tour

The museum exhibition, "Indivisible: Stories of American Community," is composed of nearly two hundred original photographs accompanied by extensive excerpts from recorded interviews. Audio guides, free to museum visitors, allow people to hear a montage of voices from citizens on the front lines of grassroots democracy, who share their stories of the relationships, motivations, struggles, ingenuity, commitment, and accomplishments that drive community problem-solving.

The national tour schedule follows:
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago. IL, Through Nov. 26, 2000
Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH, Dec. 16, 2000 - Feb. 25, 2001
Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, July 14 - Sept. 30, 2001
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, Oct. 21, 2001 - Jan. 6, 2002
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, Jan. 27 - Apr. 21, 2002
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, May 11 - July 13, 2002
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, Aug. 10 - Oct. 6, 2002
Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, AK, Oct. 28 - Dec. 31, 2000

The Book

As part of the project, W.W. Norton & Company and Lyndhurst Books, a series of the Center for Documentary Studies, are publishing a major book of photography and observations, titled Local Heroes Changing America: Indivisible. A foreword by journalist Ray Suarez challenges readers to consider a new perspective on communities, especially those we so often dismiss as disadvantaged or powerless. Suarez, senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, is former host of National Public Radio's call-in news program Talk of the Nation. Local Heroes Changing America will be a permanent record of Americans engaged in public life at the end of the 20th century, powerfully represented in distinctive images and interview excerpts. Also included is an audio CD of community voices and vignettes. Local Heroes Changing America will be in bookstores in early October 2000.

Postcard Exhibits

Indivisible's nationally touring museum exhibition is complemented by a postcard version shown in public spaces and crossroads such as train stations, libraries, university student unions, and airports nationwide. Opening in Chicago and traveling to numerous cities, including Albany, Dallas, Denver, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Stony Brook, and Washington D.C., among others, the postcard exhibit was designed to take the words and images of Indivisible to a broad audience. These installations feature racks of free postcards-three million will be distributed-and an interactive computer station that allows visitors to record their own stories of community.

Web Site

The project Web site, (http://www.indivisible.org), offers people all over the world an opportunity to experience Indivisible and to explore additional resources for participating in civic life. The Web site includes photographs, audio interviews, short video clips, a space for online dialogue, resource guides and links, educators' material, a bibliography for further reading, and suggestions for how visitors can document their own community efforts. It also provides a forum for engaging in dialogue and exchanging ideas on building community. The Web site reaches beyond the exhibitions and the book to provide greater access to Indivisible, creating the opportunity for new audiences to connect with the ideas and themes of the project.

Educators' Guide

The Indivisible Educators' Guide will be distributed to K-12 teachers, through museum venues and through the Indivisible Web site. This resource will enable teachers to integrate the exhibitions photographs, interviews, and themes into their own interdisciplinary curricula in conjunction with a visit to the museum gallery. The guide focuses on the documentary tradition and the power of images and personal narrative to reveal aspects of identity, community, and civic engagement. It includes an introduction and overview of each of the project sites, as well as background on documenting local communities through oral history and photographs. A selection of slides of exhibition photographs and an audio CD composed of excerpts from project interviews accompany lessons for analyzing the form and content of Indivisible images and dialogue.

Community Booklet

The booklet Documenting Community Action is a step-by-step guide for community organizations that plan to develop and conduct their own documentary projects using a camera and tape recorder. The booklet explains how documentary work at the local level can provoke important community discussion and lead to collaborative problem solving. Documenting Community Action outlines the basic principles of project development, budgeting, image making, and oral history interviewing, and it provides creative ideas about how the products of documentary work can be put into action. It also explores the ethics of documentary work and offers useful tips about equipment, project timelines, and community collaboration. The booklet is available through the Indivisible Web site.

Organizers

The Center for Documentary Studies (CDS), an interdisciplinary educational organization affiliated with Duke University, is dedicated to advancing documentary work that combines experience and creativity with education and community life. Founded in 1989, CDS connects the arts and humanities to fieldwork, drawing upon photography, filmmaking, oral history, folklore, and writing as catalysts for education and change. CDS supports the active examination of contemporary society, the recognition of collaboration as central to documentary work, and the presentation of experiences that heighten our historical and cultural awareness. CDS achieves this work through academic courses, research, oral history and other fieldwork, gallery and traveling exhibitions, annual awards, book publishing, community-based projects, and public events.

The Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona is a museum and research institution dedicated to photography as an art form and cultural record. The CCP holds more archives and individual works by 20th century North American photographers than any other museum in the nation, including the archives of over sixty major 20th century American photographers - Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand among them - whose prints are the centerpiece of an art collection numbering more than sixty thousand works by two thousand photographers. The CCP has an integrated program of preservation, access, and education that celebrates the history of photography and its contemporary practice and is celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 2000 and 2001.

The Pew Charitable Trusts

The Pew Charitable Trusts support nonprofit activities in the areas of culture, education, the environment, health and human services, public policy, and religion. Based in Philadelphia, the Trusts make strategic investments to help organizations and citizens develop practical solutions to difficult problems. In 1999, with approximately $4.9 billion in assets, the Trusts granted more than $250 million to 206 organizations.

The Pew Charitable Trusts invest in ideas that fuel timely action and results. They focus a significant portion of their resources on supporting programs that stimulate participation in civic affairs. These include initiatives that foster a citizenry more engaged in local, regional, and national public issues and that provide information resources for the media, the public, and policymakers.

The programs supported by the Trusts address a spectrum of issues affecting the democratic impulse, especially among younger people. These include partnerships that drive public participation in local and national democratic processes; research revealing the motivations for, and impediments to, individuals becoming engaged in social action; establishing information resources for the media, public, and policymakers; and preserving original historic documents and sites that serve as touchstones for animating discussion about the rights and responsibilities that define us as Americans. The collective goal of these investments is to reinvigorate public participation in democracy and, by doing so, strengthen the fabric of community that extends from neighborhood to nationhood.

For questions or inquiries, please contact Lynn McKnight, Communications Director, Indivisible, Center for Documentary Studies 919/660-3654.

Indivisible Communities

Alaskan Fishing Communities, North Pacific Coast, Alaska

The state of Alaska includes more than thirty thousand miles of shoreline - nearly half of all the shoreline in the United States. No place in America is more connected to or dependent on the sea. Here, the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea fisheries provide more than 50 percent of all U.S. domestic landings of fish, while the fishing industry in Alaska is the state's largest private sector employer.

In 1993 coastal residents and others dependent on marine resources for their livelihood organized the Alaska Marine Conservation Council (AMCC) to educate and collaborate with business, environmental, and regulatory groups and local communities to protect and restore marine habitat. A consortium of fishermen, environmentalists, scientists, and educators, the AMCC is a community of individuals who are connected through their occupation, their ties to the environment, and their proximity to the sea. Its members have come to their understanding of ecology through living in and off the natural world, and they act on the belief that the best solutions to complex ecological problems are driven by local people.

The organization's work is visible throughout Alaska's fishing industry. Among other accomplishments, the AMCC led the statewide, grassroots effort to set limits and curtail overfishing. Smaller, independent fishermen now have a voice in resource-management discussions, thanks to the AMCC. Its advocacy on behalf of Alaskan native communities and their rights to subsistence fishing practices helps preserve native people's traditions. The AMCC also negotiated an agreement to limit bottom trawling around Kodiak Island and in the Bering Sea, showing how well it builds consensus that leads to change.

Alternatives Federal Credit Union, Ithaca, New York

Ithaca, a picturesque lakeside college town of thirty thousand in upstate New York, has long had a reputation that sets it apart, a reputation that is decidedly "alternative" - supported by a disproportionate number of progressive businesses, organizations, and initiatives that challenge the mainstream. Alternatives Federal Credit Union is a nexus for this remarkable array of nonprofits and microenterprises. Working within federally controlled standards for credit unions, the programs and policies of member-owned Alternatives are shaped by a commitment to social change and local investment. This mission is rare in the banking world, but after twenty years, this unusual credit union has earned its legitimacy, paving the way for local opportunity and setting an example for community development credit unions around the country.

Ithaca proper is nestled in a valley, with two hilltop institutions of higher learning that bring affluence, sophistication, and privilege to a town surrounded by a large, depressed, and underserved rural countryside, the northern end of Appalachia. The population of greater Ithaca, while remarkably diverse, is still polarized by race, class, lifestyle, education, and splits between town versus gown, country versus city, business interests versus environmental concerns, and other categories of difference that challenge progress in many American communities.

Through its progressive philosophy and innovative services, Alternatives has worked locally to have a visible impact on community development and individual opportunity. Its inventive programs and products provide low-income and "high-risk" members with such fundamental financial tools as mortgages, small business start-up loans, personal savings incentives, fee-free banking services, lines of credit, and education toward economic literacy Coupled with a barter system currency called the Ithaca Hour, this trend-setting community development credit union offers working "alternatives" that create a more democratic and self-sufficient local economy.

CHALK (Communities in Harmony Advocating for Learning and Kids) San Francisco, California

Only three years old, CHALK's Youthline is a toll-free phone service offering noon-to-midnight access to "listeners," young staff trained to direct callers to help and information through an enormous database and the Internet. Listeners support their peers with conversation and encouragement, empowering callers to identify all their tools, personal and public, and use them to improve and enjoy their lives. Youth-to-youth communication is a central premise of Youthline, as is allowing young staff to supervise and operate the running of the phone service, reporting to adult directors. Coming from diverse backgrounds, the staff reflects the complex demographics of the cities and counties they serve.

CHALK employs youth who are from sixteen to twenty-two years old, pays them hourly, and gives them a minimum of eighty hours of training in social work and communication skills. They increase their knowledge and sensitivity to such serious issues as AIDS awareness and sexually transmitted diseases, drug and alcohol abuse, gang codes and violence, child abuse and rape, eating disorders, and suicide prevention. They are carefully prepared for crisis calls, and supervisors are available to talk them through difficult encounters. All calls are confidential.

Youthline is a gateway to youth services and information of all kinds. Callers can request horoscopes, movie times, job listings, and more. As the Internet aggressively forms new communities without borders, the telephone remains (and with the cell phone becomes increasingly) the most prevalent and accessible means of remote interaction. Youthline - youth helping youth, creating their own virtual community of support and a bridge from isolation to connection - was conceived and championed by Bay Area technology experts, who saw the potential of computers and telephones working together to reach the greatest number of area youth.

Haitian Citizens Police Academy and Roving Patrol, and MAD DADS Street Patrol Delray Beach, Florida

When great numbers of immigrants settle in a new place in a short period of time, they often challenge community stability. Delray Beach and Palm Beach County, Florida, for example, were unprepared for the huge influx of Haitians who arrived there after leaving their island home in search of greater political freedom and the better life that America promised. Close to 17,000 Haitians - nearly 33 percent of the city's population - now make Delray Beach their home.

For police and other officials charged with maintaining safety and interacting with local residents, the challenges to effective communication were exacerbated by this wave of immigration. Many newly arrived Haitian residents had little or no understanding of local police practices and American laws. Haitian newcomers faced language and cultural barriers and were quickly stereotyped and victimized.

The Delray Beach Police Department, with other organizations, saw the need to build trust and communicate with this new population. The department embraced the concept of community policing, with law enforcement officers serving as advocates for local people as well as patrollers for safety, and with police officers providing a regular presence in the neighborhoods. The police department initiated programs that reached out to groups throughout the city and brought local people into the work of policing. Two key groups that came out of this process are the Haitian Citizens Police Academy and Roving Patrol and MAD DADS, an African American community policing effort aimed at reducing drug-related crime in Delray. These two volunteer organizations are powerful examples of a city's ability to change and grow. Delray Beach has seen a remarkable improvement in cultural understanding and in relations between citizens and city officials, and the neighborhood streets are now safer places for everyone.

Diné bí' íína Inc. (Navajo Lifeways) Navajo Nation (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado)

Building a future on the shoulders of the past is the goal of a group of Navajo herders, weavers, and cultural activists working under the name Diné bí' íína, meaning "Navajo lifeways." Sheep, say Navajo elders, will unlock a prosperous future for the Navajo Nation. Identifying with deep cultural traditions, Diné bí' íína organizers, who represent the Navajo Nation Sheep and Goat Producers, see long-term economic and cultural benefits in increasing sheep and wool production and in nurturing awareness of the history of sheep to the Navajo way of life. Founded in Arizona in 1991, the group is committed to supporting traditional ways of life and economic opportunity. While a Navajo organization primarily led by Navajo women, Diné bí' íína works with anyone interested in raising sheep or working with wool.

Here in the Southwest desert, tribal leaders have helped revive sheep farming among the Navajo with the reintroduction of the Churro sheep, which were once widely raised by the tribe. The Churro was central to Navajo life for a very long time - deeply connected to Navajo agriculture and day-to-day life until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when the sheep were nearly exterminated by a combination of agricultural policies, herd reduction incentives, and the introduction of other breeds by the U.S. government. In recent years the Navajo, recognizing the importance of this breed to tribal lifeways, spirituality, traditional arts, and economic independence, have been raising the Churro in increasing numbers. This old breed of sheep is in effect a symbol of the tribe's past through which one can see a promising future.

Eau Claire Community Council. and Eau Claire Community of Shalom Eau Claire-North Columbia, South Carolina

Eau Claire, South Carolina, with a population of approximately thirty thousand, sits just north of Columbia, the state capital. At one time Eau Claire, the city's first suburb, was solidly white and middle class. During the 1960s, Eau Claire saw changes like those in many American neighborhoods close to downtown areas. As urban renewal and redevelopment changed the landscape of greater Columbia, African Americans were uprooted from their inner-city homes and began to settle in Eau Claire. Many white residents moved out into newer suburbs, selling their former homes to absentee landlords, who created a community of renters. As the civil rights movement progressed, African American families bought or built homes in the Eau Claire area, and they eventually became the majority population, determined to play an active role in local politics.

This slow but profound transformation left Eau Claire with an abundance of local assets and a desire for neighborhood stability. In the last ten to fifteen years, a group of residents began working to revive Eau Claire. Beginning with biracial, faith-based efforts, blacks and whites came together to build grassroots support to improve the community for all. With over seventy churches and at least thirty neighborhood associations, Eau Claire leaders formed two primary community initiatives: the Eau Claire Community Council and the Community of Shalom.

The renewal of Eau Claire results from the commitment of many residents. Born of a desire to restore property values, promote self-esteem, and advance political influence, the Eau Claire leadership sustains local activism and advances the common good. With purposeful effort a cadre of residents forged initiatives across lines of race and class, positioning Eau Claire to confront and solve problems with vision, decency, and the promise of sustained success.

Handmade in America Small Town Revitalization Project Western North Carolina

Throughout America small rural towns are struggling to survive and maintain their character, economy, and way of life. In western North Carolina, HandMade in America, a nonprofit serving twenty-three counties, works to restore life to local economies and small communities. Founded in 1994 to assist mountain communities as they embarked on environmentally and culturally sensitive economic planning. HandMade works from the premise that handmade objects can build a strong and diverse economic base. The tradition of mountain people making utilitarian objects and tools, building their own furniture, making clothing, blankets, and quilts, reflects the isolation of these hard-to-reach communities.

HandMade has turned to this mountain culture for solutions, as has its spinoff, the Small Town Revitalization Project. Small Town Revitalization works with seven towns and focuses on each town's unique cultural and economic assets. The project looks not so much to new marketing fads but rather in the region's own backyard, seeking to build creatively on the past.

Marshall, the county seat of Madison County, is one such small town. In the last years of the 1700s, Marshall became a stopover along the French Broad River for livestock drovers; it then evolved into a stagecoach settlement and, by the end of the 1800s, a railroad town. Marshall became a major trading center where people came to conduct business at the courthouse and purchase supplies. By the early 1960s, however, a highway bypass, coupled with the passing of railroad travel, began the town's gradual economic decline.

The Small Town Revitalization Project develops ideas for preservation of a viable small town using Marshall's own history. These ideas - of how to promote and handle tourism, develop small businesses, and maintain existing commerce - have emerged from many community conversations. The citizens of Marshall are building the future while preserving the character of their town and their cultural legacy.

Midwifery Practice and Doula Service, University Hospital and Medical Center Stony Brook, New York

The impersonality of hospital-based birth, together with increasing medical intervention and the growing isolation of new mothers, has led to the development of doula service, a new community role with deep roots in traditional practice. "Doula" is a Greek word denoting a woman's servant, or someone who acts in service of another person. Today the term describes a person who is trained to offer prenatal and labor support, as well as emotional and practical assistance through the early postpartum weeks at home.

The Doula Service of University Hospital and Medical Center in Stony Brook, New York, trains Long Island women to be doulas, and provides the option of doula support to expectant mothers regardless of their ability to pay. In tandem with Suffolk County's first hospital midwifery practice, a small group of women, led by in inspired trio of obstetrician, nurse-midwife, and doula instructor, serve as doulas for mothers of all ages and backgrounds.

While the work of doulas during childbirth largely consists of encouraging words, wiped brows, massages, hand-holding, and help with walking and position changes, the presence of a doula in the delivery room results in remarkably lowered rates of cesarean sections and use of anesthesia, particularly epidurals. Their postpartum service includes breastfeeding advice, companionship and conversation, and such necessary tasks as babysitting older siblings, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and newbom care. A doula intends never to supersede the relationship between mother and child, nor the role of the father, family, and friends, but rather to help create a supportive environment for those relationships to flourish in the presence of new life.

Proyecto Azteca, San Juan, Hidalgo County, Texas

The land along the Texas-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley is home to a vital culture and community of families who immigrated to the United States from Mexico in pursuit of better economic opportunity. Proyecto Azteca, an organization founded in 1991 by a group from the United Farm Workers union who saw the need for better housing in the region, works with low-income Mexican American families to build quality affordable homes.

Over the years, many Mexican immigrants settled into makeshift houses in colonias - unincorporated rural developments, no more than a constellation of small land tracts with disheveled housing scattered along a dirt road. While offering a first-rung opportunity for land ownership, colonias typically have no running water, sewer service, or electricity. Moving to better, more comfortable housing is the dream of many Rio Grande Valley Mexicans. Founded on the principles of self-help and grassroots activism, Proyecto Azteca works to lift families out of marginal colonias and into fine owner-built homes purchased through a combination of sweat equity and no-interest loans.

The organization has built 127 houses in the past nine years. constructed mostly by and for farmworker families. Families are trained and assisted in construction techniques and benefit from bulk purchase of building materials. The standard Proyecto Azteca house is a three-bedroom, one-bath home with a kitchen, dining room, and living room, totaling 816 square feet, creating a haven for hardworking families. The houses are generally built three at a time, with groups of people working together, and later each house is moved to the family's lot in the nearby colonia. Houses cost approximately sixteen thousand dollars and are financed without interest.

Southwest Youth Collaborative, Chicago, Illinois

Once the home of Irish, German, Italian, Slovak, and other European families who made lives along the brick bungalow-lined streets of the area, the southwest side of Chicago experienced dramatic changes after the 1960s civil rights movement. Today, it is home predominantly to African American and Latino working-class families and to many more recent Immigrants of widely diverse origins.

In recent years, like parts of many American cities, southwest Chicago has seen a rising incidence of crime, gang-related problems, poverty, and unemployment problems that profoundly challenge the lives of the community's young people. While some might see the neighborhood's diversity as an impediment to improving local conditions, the Southwest Youth Collaborative, founded in the early 1980s, embraces pluralism fully and sees the potential for a rich and vibrant life. The Collaborative grew out of very local needs and concerns, and is guided by community residents who believe that youth-driven, neighborhood-based efforts offer the greatest chance to effect positive change for the area and its families. Born of a collaboration between faith-based institutions, social service centers, recreational centers, and neighborhood organizations, the Collaborative seeks to build youth leadership, cross-cultural understanding, and intergenerational dialogue through a myriad of remarkable programs.

Five affiliated programs are central to the work of the Collaborative. Girl Talk, a program for female juvenile offenders, meets weekly to discuss issues of self-esteem, sexuality, abuse, and avoiding repeat incarceration. The Prison Action Committee assists released offenders and works to improve conditions inside the Illinois prison system. The Community Justice Initiative works with young people to probe a range of justice and legal issues through role playing and group discussion. The group educates other young people through events and training sessions on issues of juvenile justice. West Englewood Youth and Teen Center and the Greater Lawn Community Youth Network are neighborhood centers that provide a variety of programs for area youth.

The Village of Arts and Humanities Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The road to transformation of inner-city neighborhoods ravaged by neglect, despair, and economic failure is a hard one. Urban poverty, drugs and crime may seem intractable obstacles, but the residents of such neighborhoods, who face terrific odds, also form a community of possibility. If they are nurtured and valued; if they gain the positive attention of the larger world and their elected representatives; if beauty has a place in their lives - individuals have important tools to turn the tide. The vision of the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia is to engender these conditions, rebuilding community through creativity.

What began as a park building project on a single vacant lot in 1986 by artist Lily Yeh, some neighborhood children, and a local handyman has burgeoned into many more community parks and gardens, as well as a comprehensive constellation of education, arts, neighborhood development, and outreach programs. Under Yeh's direction, the Village has reclaimed a small slice of Philadelphia's "badlands" with its funky, turreted stucco architecture, recycled-tire flower pots, vegetable gardens, and colorful public art-mosaics, murals, and sculpture that reflect the art and craft of Yeh, James "Big Man" Maxton, guest artists, and the community - especially the children. Villagers celebrate their work with festivals, performances, and other events that reflect their ongoing array of services and programs. Their commitment to youth and health, arts-based reclamation, and community capacities has attracted enough media attention to make the Village an unlikely tourist destination and modest national model. Through Youth Theater, publications, craft productions, and outreach efforts, Village residents extend their approach to building community through the arts to other "villages" seeking to initiate their own renaissance.

Yaak Valley Forest Community, Yaak Valley, Montana

In the far northwest corner of Montana, there is a scattered settlement of fewer than 150 families living in the woods of the Yaak Valley, often without electricity or plumbing. Their private parcels of land make up only 2 to 3 percent of what is otherwise a vast national forest:

500,000 acres of federal land where large-scale logging has occupied the area for generations. As new paved roads and an expanding utility grid attract more retirees, second-home owners, and others who want wooded retreats but not to live off the land, Yaak and other historically small, unorganized rural districts of the Kootenai National Forest face a significant period of transition.

After decades of high-yield tree harvesting by international logging corporations, the pressure to address environmental recovery and sustainability is felt by vastly different constituencies, from Washington bureaucrats to fly fishermen. Conflicts over logging, forest use and access, and the perpetual issue of people's relationship to nature, have hotly divided many residents since the 1960s, when back-to-the landers, hippies, and others with environmentalist leanings began to settle here. The newcomers' support of the protection of endangered species, moratoriums on road-building, and cut-and-run logging practices threatened the livelihood of some loggers and others who saw restrictions and regulation as the first steps toward the loss of their jobs, their land, and their freedom.

The realization that extreme positions are in fact held by very few is one of many positive results of local participation in Forest Stewardship, a community pilot program of the U.S. Forest Service. Creating a coalition to qualify for the program was a turbulent process, beginning with formation of the Yaak Valley Forest Council, an activist group that supports ecological diversity and forest protection, particularly the last remaining roadless areas in the Yaak. Although the group's leadership was ultimately rejected by the larger community in informal votes, its role as a catalyst for dialogue and new approaches is widely acknowledged. The issues and experiences of the valley and the struggle toward involving the community in government management of the land around them reveal the value and "messiness" of democracy.

Indivisible Photographers And Interviewers

Photographers

Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey, a professor of photography at Columbia College - Chicago, began his first extensive project on the streets of New York City's Harlem in 1975. By the nineties, Bey had become known for his portraits of urban youth made with a 20 x 24 Polaroid camera. These images, and his earlier black-and-white work, have been published, exhibited, and collected extensively and were the subject of a retrospective exhibition and book organized by the Walker Art Center in 1995.

Bill Burke
Bill Burke is an instructor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His first documentary commission was with the Kentucky Bicentennial Photo Project, the first of many grants and awards he has received. His books, I Want to Take Picture and Mine Fields, are a combination of artist's book and travelogue. Since the eighties, Burke has photographed extensively in Southeast Asia. His most recent project is a study of French colonial architecture in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Debbie Fleming Caffery
Debbie Fleming Caffery began photographing sugarcane workers in her native Louisiana in the early 1970s while studying photography at the Rice University Media Center. Her monograph, Carry Me Home, features a selection of these images and other work from her home region. Caffery has extended her subjects to the cultures of Mexico and Portugal and other American places. A teacher who is renowned for her expressive black-and-white printing, Caffery has work in many major museum collections and has been exhibited internationally.

Lucy Capehart
Lucy Capehart has worked as a curator since 1981, and is currently a contract curator of education at the Art Museum of Missoula in Montana. Her large color studies of domestic interiors and the American cultural landscape have been widely exhibited, including solo exhibitions at the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Her work is featured on book and CD covers and has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Architecture, and elsewhere.

Lynn Davis
New York-based Lynn Davis began her career as a studio photographer of figures and objects. Since completing a series of photographs of icebergs off Greenland in 1986, she has concentrated on ancient monuments, sacred architecture, and natural water subjects around the world. Davis' work is represented in numerous public and private collections and is surveyed in her 1999 book "Monument." Her photographs of Africa illustrate Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Wonders of the African World.

Terry Evans
In her most recent books, The Inhabited Prairie and Disarming the Prairie, noted landscape photographer Terry Evans uses both aerial and ground photography, in black and white and color, to tell the stories of human change engraved on the prairie and the communities that live there. Raised in Kansas, her long involvement with this unique ecology and culture has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Lauren Greenfield
The photographs and interviews in Lauren Greenfield's 1997 book Fast Forward. Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood established her as a premier interpreter of American youth culture. A native and current resident of Los Angeles, Greenfield is a working photojournalist who has been recognized by many prestigious grants and awards. Her images have appeared in countless magazines and newspapers in the United States and abroad. At present, she is developing a major project on girls in America.

Joan Liftin
Joan Liftin is director of documentary and photojournalism education at the International Center of Photography in New York City. A freelance photographer, she has developed numerous projects and assignments. Her picture essays have been seen in The New York Times Magazine, Creative Photography, Zoom, and other publications. Currently, she is finishing a color book project on the drive-in movie experience in America.

Reagan Louie
Reagan Louie has been a professor of photography at the San Francisco Art Institute since 1976. His ten-year project photographing contemporary China, which began when he and his father returned to the village where Louie's father was born, is presented in the book Toward a Truer Life: Photographs of China, 1980-1990. A Guggenheim and Fulbright fellow, Louie has also received the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize and the James Phelan Art Award. His next extensive project explores sex, sexuality, and love in Asia.

Danny Lyon
Also a writer and filmmaker, New York photographer Danny Lyon is well known for his frank and lyric vision. Many of his images have become iconic signs of their time and place, from the civil rights movement to Texas prison life. His landmark book, The Bikeriders, was recently reissued, and a photomontage memoir entitled Knave of Hearts was published in 2000. A retrospective Danny Lyon exhibition and book was organized by the Center for Creative Photography and the Museum Folkwang in 1991.

Sylvia Plachy
Born in Budapest, Sylvia Plachy emigrated in 1958 and lives in New York, where she is a longtime staff photographer at The Village Voice. Her three books are Unguided Tour, Red Light, and her 1999 monograph, Signs and Relics. A well-established photojournalist with a distinctly personal vision. Plachy has published extensively; her photo credits range from Newsweek to Grand Street to Wired. A Guggenheim fellow, she is represented in many museum collections and exhibitions.

Eli Reed
Eli Reed, a member of Magnum Photos, has been documenting the black experience since he first began taking photographs. His 1997 book, Black in America, shows the breadth and complexity of this sixteen-year exploration. His other books include "Beirut. City of Regrets, War Torn, and Homeless in America." A much sought-after photojournalist, Reed covers national and world events for numerous magazines and organizations, and he has also contributed work to film projects. Reed has received a W. Eugene Smith Grant for Documentary Photography.

Interviewers

Merle Augustin
For the past eight years, journalist Merle Augustin has been writing extensively about Haitian issues in the United States and in Haiti. She is currently writing for the Sun-Sentinel, covering the city of Boynton Beach in Palm Beach County. Augustin is part of a team of reporters working on a year-long series about South Florida and the meaning of community in such a diverse region.

Dan Collison
Dan Collison, a regular contributor to National Public Radio, is executive director/producer of DC Productions, a not-for-profit organization specializing in radio and video documentaries about people and places overlooked by the mainstream media. His 1998 radio documentary "Scenes from a Transplant" received a prestigious du Pont-Columbia Award. The film version aired on the HBO/Cinemax Reel Life series.

Barry Dornfeld
Barry Dornfeld is director and associate professor of the Communication Program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Dornfeld has been working in film and video for twenty years, producing and directing documentaries on a range of topics including the Philadelphia Hmong refugee community, Ghanaian traditional performance in the United States, and an Appalachian Baptist Church. Dornfeld recently completed the book Producing Public Television, Producing Public Culture, an ethnographic study of the public television documentary.

George King
Trained as a documentary filmmaker in the United Kingdom, George King relocated to the United States in 1979. He works as a writer/producer of nonfiction projects in theater, film, television, and radio. King's recent work includes Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, the acclaimed radio history of the civil rights movement in five Southern communities, and Goin' to Chicago," a history of the African American great migrations to air on PBS in summer 2000.

Jack Loeffler
Since 1967 Jack Loeffler has recorded traditional cultures throughout the American Southwest, Mexico, Japan, and the Cook Islands. He is the producer/director of Southwest Sound Collage, a radio series nationally distributed by Pacifica Radio; The Spirit of Place, a radio series that addresses the relationship between indigenous and traditional cultures; and scores of other documentary radio programs. Loeffler's latest book is La Musica de los Viejitos: The Hispano Folk Music of the Rio Grande del Norte.

Jens Lund
Folklorist Jens Lund documents occupational poets in the western United States and Canada, and has been involved in research on the traditions of Northwest timber communities, the folklore of Midwestern rivers, and Denmark's resistance to the Holocaust. His 1985 documentary film, The Pearl Fishers, about freshwater pearl fishing in Indiana, was chosen the Best Ethnographic Film-The Americas by the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of Flatheads and Spooneys: Fishing for a Living in the Ohio River Valley.

Karen Michel
For more than a dozen years, Karen Michel has been an award-winning contributor to National Public Radio. Recognition for Michel's radio work has come from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and American Women in Radio and Television. She currently teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Daniel Rothenberg
Daniel Rothenberg is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and a fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows. He has also taught in the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago and in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine. His book, With These Hands. The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today, documents the world of migrant farmworkers through the presentation of a diverse array of personal narratives.

Jeff Whetstone
Jeff Whetstone has been documenting Southern communities since he graduated from Duke University in 1990. His latest project is Bringing Something from Home, a documentary book on family dynamics of highly motivated high school students in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is currently attending Yale University, where he is working toward an MFA in photography.

Joe Wood
For the past ten years, Joe Wood has been a prominent voice on contemporary American culture. In 1996 he joined The New Press as an editor of nonfiction books. His essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The Village Voice, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine. Esquire, and Rolling Stone. Joe Wood disappeared on July 8, 1999, while hiking on Mount Rainier, Washington.

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