QUOTATIONS FROM INTERVIEWS

A quotation from each Indivisible community project is excerpted from the hundreds of hours of interviews and transcriptions. If you have a sound card, you can also hear selections from the interviews at the Indivisible Audio Portraits site. (INDIVISIBLE LINK)

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

As wonderful as birth is, it's very scary, and women really need that continual support that they are not able to get in hospitals because of staffing situations, nurses really can't provide one-on-one care. Their partners, although they've prepared themselves for labor and birth, it's very different when you get into a labor unit.

Lise Golub experienced doula

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

My mom told me one time, she said "You're very vulnerable when there's only one person." And she said, "Think about sheep that way. When I take that wool and when I spin it into many strands and when I twist it, she said, we've become, all of us, intertwined and we become strong, like many, many people together helping each other. So, that's how I think about my rug. And there's alotta history, there's a lot of things you know, woven into that rug."

Sharon Begay, DBI President and Founder

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

Eau Claire has changed a whole lot in ten years. It's gone from an area that basically people would drive through with their windows rolled up-you know, were scared to death to be in. You would see the area as just a crime-ridden, urban, black area in Columbia, and you'd just write it off. So it's changed from all of that to where now it's a neighborhood: it's an urban core section of a major city that everybody knows and believes and can see is on its way back.

Scott Trent, founding member and former president of the Eau Claire Community Council

from Proyecto Azteca, San Juan, Hidalgo County, Texas

I do believe that everybody deserves to have a home, and a comfortable home, where you can have your own space, your own privacy. You can feel this comfortable, how I feel, how my children come home in the afternoons, and how comfortable they feel. I had never seen them so calm in my lifetime, until now. My husband, when he comes home, he knows he comes home to our home.

Yolanda Hernandez, owner of a Proyecto Azteca home

from Southwest Youth Collaborative, Chicago, Illinois

We only know and only can learn what our elders teach us. So, we have to learn from them. But if they're scared to talk to us about what they know, how are we supposed to know, because, I mean, we learn from them. And, like, the younger generation learns from us, but-they have to be willing to talk to us and we have to be willing to talk to the younger generation.

Sherry Brown, a mentor with the Collaborative, who also serves on its board of directors

from Yaak Valley Forest Community, Yaak Valley, Montana

For the most part, the story of Yaak's forest is a story of co-dominance, which seems to me to be a good metaphor for the community. We have significant diversity in our community and no one view, no one person, no one group, should run the show, nor do they run the show. And that's the real challenge that we're facing as a community is how to keep that community vibrant and engaged with the issues just as we're trying to keep this wonderful, multi-species forest intact and functioning, rather than over-managed, over-manipulated, over-harmed, over-injured, over-controlled.

Rick Bass, local resident, author, and advocate for wilderness protection

from Haitian Citizens Police Academy, Delray Beach, Florida

What we had was a serious perception and image problem that we had to overcome. And frankly, my approach to this was very simple. One, I'm never going to lie to ya, two, that if you are depending upon the police to change your circumstances and your situation down here in your neighborhoods, if you're depending on the police alone to do that, it will not happen. . .If you don't get involved, if you don't work with us. . . it won't happen.

Richard Overman, Delray Chief of Police

from Alaskan Fishing Communities, North Pacific Coast, Alaska

I tend to wanna just throw out that language and the baggage around the environ-mental movement versus the development movement and acknowledge the reality of our dependence on the planet, on the resources. We're not gonna stop using them, but we have to figure out better ways to use them. There are far too many people now for this planet to be able to sustain us in the way we've been accustomed to using things in the past. It can't happen. It won't. Something is going to break down. And we might as well try'n figure out before it happens how best to change things, how we can be more responsible.

Carolyn Servid, Nonprofit Island Institute, Sitka, Alaska

from CHALK--Communities in Harmony Advocating for Learning and Kids, San Francisco, California

People are gonna always just need someone to talk to about what's going on in their lives. And, I feel like youth, it's kinda harder because they deal with a lot of issues that they can't talk [about] with just anybody. For example, a teenage girl who thinks she might be pregnant can't talk to her mom about that and maybe can't talk to her boyfriend about that 'cause she doesn't know how he'll feel about it. Or, can't talk to her friends 'cause she knows that her friends don't like him. You know, and so, it leaves her alone. And she just needs someone to talk to. And that's where Youthline can come in.

Ruth Barajas, CHALK development coordinator and Youthline listener

from Alternatives Federal Credit Union, Ithaca, New York

I've said it before, and I really honestly mean it. That they really did allow us to make our dream come true. Because we are self-employed, and we didn't have a lot of money to start with, we had to figure out a creative way to try and build a house. And, because it was going to be owner built, they really worked with us, the credit union really worked with us. I've been involved with them for many years. So, they personally knew me, and that's part of what the credit union is like. It's that they, they really are a community bank, and they knew me, and they wanted this to work for us.

Barbara Brazill, AFCU member who, with Dan Ruff, built her home with credit union financing

from HandMade in America Small Town Revitalization Project, Western North Carolina

I was raised right here in these mountains. You just can't beat it--no way. I don't care where you go. And I've been over a lot of country in my life, but I've never seen nothin' to beat these mountains.

Davitus Gosnell, a 90 year-old tobacco farmer from Marshall

from The Village of Arts and Humanities, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

This is where art and society and politics and social work is all merging into one, and this is the skeleton and the backbone of everything we deliver, whether it's transforming the community physically, helping a teen to go to college, it's in everything that we do. So I always say that art is not just the project that we produce, like a mural, a park, and a performance. It's much more essential to our daily activities. And art is creativity in thinking, in methodology, in implementation. That's what we call art.

Lily Yeh artist, founder, and Director of the Village of Arts and Humanities
 

http://www.creativephotography.org    This page last updated September 24, 2000.   oncenter@ccp.arizona.edu