In this episode of the “Collage” podcast, Rev. F. Willis Johnson and Rev. Gregory Kendrick explore the profound intersections of faith, history and preservation. They delve into the power of sacred spaces and how maintaining and honoring these place can be a form of advocacy.
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A new blueprint for financing community development – Part III
Dec 19, 2024
In Part 2 of this three-part series focused on why and how the community development finance field needs to reframe the role of capital technicians and the market, rebalance power relationships, and prioritize community voice. Today we continue that discussion.
Invest Appalachia
Invest Appalachia (IA) is another strong example of how to rebalance power between financial expertise and community voice. On the surface, IA can be described in traditional finance terms—a community investment fund similar to a CDFI that has raised $35.5 million in impact investments and nearly $3 million in grants for flexible and risk-absorbing capital. IA officially opened its doors at the end of 2022. In its first year of operation, it deployed $6.3 million in blended capital (flexible loans alongside recoverable grants) to support community economic development projects and businesses across the Appalachian counties of six states: Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio. Another $6.5 million was deployed in the first eight months of 2024.
However, IA has chosen to operate in a new and interesting way. As a nonprofit, it serves as the manager and general partner for the IA fund. Rather than becoming a CDFI itself, IA, like LTR, contracted with a CDFI, Locus, as the IA fund’s investment manager. Locus supports back-office functions of the IA fund, including portfolio management, underwriting, and coordinating third-party service provision (e.g., servicing, accounting, and administration).
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IA also holds itself to a high standard regarding both collaboration and community governance. IA’s partnership-first approach and robust network of relationships taps into the existing community investment ecosystem of philanthropy, CDFIs, and community development nonprofits. A self-described regionally representative organization, IA relies on an interlocking set of stakeholder governance structures to set strategic direction, make funding decisions, approve investments from the IA fund, and provide direct community accountability for adhering to IA’s mission and values. Its board of directors includes regional stakeholders with a diversity of identities and perspectives representing CDFIs, foundations, and community organizations. A grassroots CAC includes community leaders and grassroots community organizations that represent diverse populations. The investment committee is a group of values-oriented investment professionals that includes board members, CDFI partners, and national perspectives. Board members and members of the investment committee are approved by the board, with input from staff, while current members of the CAC nominate and approve new members.
IA’s website states, “Our investment strategy, pipeline, impact goals, and governance are guided and grounded by place-based community stakeholders.” This power shift in who directs capital strategies—from technically expert lenders to those who focus on community priorities—is crucial for moving away from the traditional paradigm of market, scale, and sustainability. Innovative financial structures can meet community needs that traditional capital investors cannot, while the sort of formalized community governance that IA has offers an added layer of assurance that community voice has an equal and enduring place at the table.
In less than two years, IA’s funding has served 115 counties, aided more than 50,000 people (most of them in rural, coal-impacted, or low-income areas), and helped secure an additional $33 million in grants and loans from other funders and lenders. Almost 80 percent of its loans were possible only because of IA’s flexible terms and funding structures—without IA, those projects would have struggled or failed to move forward. Looking ahead, IA has plans to pilot new innovative investment approaches (including collaborating with the federal government and nonprofit intermediaries to use money from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund), launch a regional initiative to support community-driven downtown development, collaborate with regional partners to increase climate resilience, and continue to create new investment vehicles and raise capital for local needs that are not being addressed by the current investment ecosystem. Under this new model, investment in Appalachia will be grounded in Appalachia.
Ushering in the New
Patient, flexible leadership and funding will be needed for the field of community development finance to evolve from the principles of market, scale, and self-sufficiency and fulfill its promise of increasing equity and opportunity in historically disadvantaged communities. Philanthropy will be essential for this move, but so will public and private developers, other public- and private-sector partners, and, most important, the empowered community residents and organizations who will be in the driver’s seat.
As this transformative arc unfolds, community quarterbacks like LTR and IA will translate the wishes of community residents into creative, flexible local and regional plans to attract financial resources and enable residents to play a meaningful role in how capital is deployed. Leadership development and training organizations, like the Center for Community Investment (whose programs have provided critical support for the leaders and work of CORE, LTR, and IA), will build local capacity and share innovative models with the field to advance the paradigm shift.
Leaders in community development across sectors will need to help the field change deep-seated ways of acting and attitudes, test new approaches, make appropriate incentive and policy changes, and move from a narrow problem-oriented point of view to a systems-change perspective. The technical and political barriers to this shift are indeed substantial, but they can be overcome, as the innovative projects discussed here, from Appalachia to Southern California, demonstrate. By following these new models, the field has an opportunity to build a consensus around a new approach to financing community development, so that it can finally tackle the problems it was created to solve.
This article was first published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Read the original article
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A revolutionary spirit of love: Remembering Nikki Giovanni
Dec 18, 2024
Earlier this month, we lost a voice that rang for decades with the clarity of truth and the warmth of eternal joy. Nikki Giovanni, the acclaimed poet, professor and icon of the Black Arts movement, passed away at the age of 81. The news struck me with the force of personal loss — not just because we lost a literary giant but because Giovanni's words have been a constant companion in my journey toward understanding the fullness of Black consciousness and the power of poetic expression.
As I sit with this loss, I remember how Giovanni's work exemplified what James Baldwin called "the artist's struggle for integrity." As a leading voice in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and '70s, her fiery and radically conscious poetry challenged social conventions while celebrating Black life's beauty and resilience. She didn't just write about revolution — she embodied it in every verse, her teaching and every dimension of her public life.
My first encounter with Giovanni's work was in the early years of high school. Her words didn't just speak to me; they ignited something profound within me. In “Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day,” she wrote of the sweetness that persists even in life's storms — a metaphor that would become central to my understanding of Black joy as a discipline of resistance. Her ability to weave together the personal and political, the tender and the fierce, showed me that our stories could be both protest and celebration. Her work became a source of inspiration, motivating me to search for my identity as a seminarian.
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For 35 years at Virginia Tech, Giovanni shaped generations of writers and thinkers, proving that the classroom could be a space of radical imagination and transformation. She understood that teaching was about imparting knowledge and awakening consciousness. Her legacy lives on in the countless students who learned from her that poetry could be both a sword and a healing balm. While others might have been content to document our pain, she celebrated our triumphs, love and ordinary moments of grace. As a cornerstone in the Black Arts Movement, she demonstrated that our resistance could be expressed through celebration as much as through protest.
Giovanni's influence was more impactful than ever imagined in my development as a preacher-prophet. Her fearless truth-telling informed me that authenticity was not just about speaking truth to power but about speaking truth to ourselves. When she wrote “Nikki-Rosa”, she wasn't just telling her story — she was permitting all of us to tell ours, to claim our narratives as worthy and beautiful. She was signaling it was alright to insert one's self in the subject line. Giovanni's pen was never divorced from the struggle for justice. Her ideas about Black nationalism were integral to her poetry and activist work, yet she never let ideology overshadow humanity. She taught us that militancy could coexist with tenderness and that revolution could be fueled by love as much as anger.
Sister Nikki’s passing leaves a void in American letters that cannot be filled, but her influence ripples outward through generations of writers, activists, proclaimers and dreamers. Many who sat at her feet learned from her that our stories matter, that joy is a superpower and that love is revolutionary. She showed us that Black consciousness wasn't just about understanding our oppression — it was about recognizing our magnificence. I want to believe that Nikki Giovanni wouldn't want us to dwell in sorrow. She wants us to create, celebrate and continue liberation through love and language. Her words remain a beacon, showing us how to transform pain into power, find light in the darkness and make poetry out of the raw material of our lives.
In one of her final interviews, Giovanni reminded us that her dream "was not to publish or to even be a writer: My dream was to discover something no one else had thought of." She achieved that dream many times over, discovering new ways to articulate the Black experience, new paths to freedom through words and new ways to love ourselves and each other.
Farewell to our warrior-poet, teacher-activist and champion of Black exuberance. I pray we carry forward writing our truths, teaching our children, loving fiercely and resisting beautifully as she did. Nikki Giovanni showed us that poetry could be a path to liberation. Now, it's our turn to walk that path, to create our own verses in the ongoing story of freedom and human dignity.
Rest in power, Sister Giovanni. Your words will forever be our revolution.
Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.
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Religious choice vs. Christian nationalism
Dec 16, 2024
American voters were under a lot of stress leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election. That stress has continued given the uncertainty as to whether many of President-elect Donald Trump’s pronouncements are just negotiating techniques or serious proposals that he will implement through executive orders upon taking office.
Angst over our Constitution also prevails. Republicans have proposed concepts that would severely impact the separation of church and state concept that’s enshrined in America’s First Amendment, wanting to make Christianity the exclusive religion in our nation. Christian nationalism has also been supported by 91 state bills and is found in the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a 922-page blueprint for Trump to follow in his first 180 days of office.
Many of Trump’s allies support the concept of Christian nationalism, whereby they believe America was founded as a Christian nation and only Christians have the power to infuse their theology within our laws. However, the separation of church and state does at least three things: It frees us from the possible oppression of an established church, it permits everyone to believe as they choose and it protects secular public education.
Andra Watkins, a best selling author who was raised in a Christian nationalist family, feels Speaker Mike Johnson (R- La.), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito are a sample of Christian nationalists who “have infiltrated our legislative and judicial branches.”
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It’s sad these right-wing entities weren’t good students of American history. As a quick review, America’s 13 original colonies belonged to the British empire and were subservient to an imperial church. The British monarchy formally lost control over its American subjects during the Revolutionary War. On July 4, 1776, and every Fourth of July since then, patriotic citizens celebrate religious freedom as well as political independence.
As Americans listen to the rhetoric proclaiming that the United States is a Christian nation, they should consider how the lack of religious freedom permeates more than 50 monarchies and authoritarian countries like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Hungary, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Afghanistan and Syria.
It’s interesting the United States is one of the most diverse religious nations in the world yet we know almost nothing about others’ beliefs. Christian nationalism prioritizes an ethno-cultural, ethno-religious and ethno-nationalist framing around fear of "the other," and represents a serious danger to the 372 distinct faith groups in America
As stated by the Rev. Barry Howard, of the Church at Wieuca in Atlanta, “The principle of separation of church and state is not an attack on religion but a protection of religious freedom and individual rights. By maintaining this distinction, we uphold the values of democracy and equality.”
We all ought to reflect on and be thankful for America’s fundamental principle of separation of church and state given the uncertainties of what lies ahead.
The universal prayer “Dawning of the Spiritual Sun” by Sharron Stroud should be an important reminder to us all of the importance of honoring and respecting all religions in our nation:
Right now somewhere in the world
A Jew is saying his prayers,
A Hindu is chanting a mantra and a
Buddhist is kneeling at her sacred shrine.
Right now at this very moment someone is
Lighting a candle in a Cathedral,
Someone is making their haj toward Mecca
For it is the will of Allah.
And someone else lights a fire in a jungle,
Repeating an ancient mystical drama.
Many, many pathways up the mountaintop
And the view is always the same from the summit!
In the Dawning of the Spiritual Sun
For a moment all faiths became as One.
The Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew . . .
Became as One and somehow knew.
That Mystic Voice that calls to me
“O yonder, yonder person, I Am Thee!”
Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
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Hegseth is the wrong leader for women in the military, warn women veterans and lawmakers
Dec 11, 2024
Originally published by The 19th.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As Pete Hegseth tries to persuade senators to support him to lead the Department of Defense in the Trump administration, several lawmakers, women veterans and military advocates warn that his confirmation could be detrimental to women in the military and reverse progress in combating sexual assault in the Armed Forces.
Hegseth, a Fox News host who served in the Army National Guard, was named by President-elect Donald Trump on November 12 as his pick for defense secretary. Since then, Hegseth has been the subject of a number of allegations of sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse and financial mismanagement. The most recent spate of news stories have detailed allegations, which Hegseth has denied, related to excessive alcohol consumption and appear to be the main topic of concern on Capitol Hill.
“It's just been very troubling to see how unconcerned many members of Congress are with men who are accused of sexual assault," said Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. While the House does not vote to confirm Cabinet nominees, Hegseth met with Republican House members on Wednesday to shore up support.
“The issue that apparently, I heard, came up in his meetings was his alleged alcohol abuse,” she said. “But I guess his abuse of women doesn't seem to bother as many folks."
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Credible allegations of impropriety have often been cause for withdrawal or disqualification. Hegseth is one of a number of Trump’s Cabinet-level nominees who face accusations of sexual misconduct.
In 2020, Hegseth paid a confidential settlement to a woman who filed a police report accusing him of raping her in 2017 at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. No charges were filed against Hegseth in connection with the encounter, which he and his lawyer maintain was consensual. The New Yorker and other outlets have reported on additional allegations that Hegseth mismanaged funds and abused alcohol while leading two veteran-focused nonprofits, and that his colleagues at Fox News witnessed him drinking to excess while he was a weekend co-host at “Fox and Friends.” Hegseth has strenuously denied those claims, including in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, and told Megyn Kelly in an interview on her SiriusXM show that he wouldn’t drink alcohol as defense secretary.
Representatives for Fox News and the Trump transition did not immediately return requests for comment. Several of Hegseth’s current and former Fox News colleagues, including current “Fox & Friends Weekends” co-host Will Cain, have spoken up in his defense.
“The press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down. It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown,” Hegseth wrote in the Journal. “They provide no evidence, no names, and they ignore the legions of people who speak on my behalf. They need to create a bogeyman, because they believe I threaten their institutional insanity. That is the only thing they are right about.”
Democratic women serving on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees argued that Hegseth getting confirmed would not only undercut years-long bipartisan efforts in Congress to address sexual assault and abuse in the military but also the armed services’ efforts to recruit more women.
“This is very concerning,” said Escobar, a Democrat. “We have been trying to address recruitment for a long time, and women are a key component of that. This is the last thing we needed, and it is my hope that those members of the Senate who are committed to these reforms and who know how important women are in the military will have very candid conversations with him, and he will drop out.”
Nearly 1 in 4 women in the military report having experienced sexual assault and more than half report harassment, according to a 2016 analysis of articles published in the peer-reviewed journal Trauma, Violence and Abuse. The vast majority of incidents go unreported, according to the RAND Corporation, which provides research to the U.S. Armed Forces. In 2018 alone, about 6,000 sexual assaults were reported to the Department of Defense, but surveys suggested more than 20,000 service members were sexually assaulted. And amid a broader military recruitment crisis, a 2020 government study found that women were leaving the military at higher rates than men and citing sexual assault as a major factor.
Michelle Simpson Tuegel, a Texas-based lawyer who does not practice in the military justice system but has represented survivors in several high-profile sex abuse cases, said Hegseth’s nomination marks “a scary moment” for women service members.
“I get calls every year from women who have faced sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military, I’ve represented people on the bases when I used to do criminal defense,” Tuegel said. “There's a lot of violence on our military bases.”
Reports of sexual assault in the military have risen by an estimated 25 percent since 2018, according to the military’s own data, which include both anonymous surveys and formal reports.
Military justice reform advocates have gained ground in recent years, particularly in regards to how military sexual assault and harassment investigations are handled. After the end of World War II, one Supreme Court ruling — known as the Feres doctrine — barred service members from suing the government over any injuries incurred while on active duty. Though typically applied to cases of medical malpractice, this ruling had expanded to include sexual assault allegations. However, the high-profile murder in 2020 of Vanessa Guillén, a soldier who was sexually harassed by a supervisor and violently murdered while stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, acted as a catalyst for reform. Guillén’s death led to major changes in the National Defense Authorization Act, guaranteeing that certain crimes like sexual assault and domestic violence would be prosecuted outside the chain of command.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a veteran, called it “insane” that Trump would nominate someone like Hegseth after the “decades” of efforts within the Armed Services.
“There are simply too many reasons proving that Pete Hegseth is not the right person to lead our military men and women, and he will not have my vote,” she said in a statement to The 19th. “Republicans confirming him to this position wouldn’t just be an insult to our men and women in uniform—it would be dangerous for our national security and military readiness.”
Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey was a student at the Naval Academy 30 years ago as part of the first class of women eligible for combat ships. She served for nearly a decade, including a stint in London when she worked for a Navy fleet commander overseeing the deployment of troops to Iraq, at a time when she said the culture was not great for women.
When young women interested in the service academies come to her office, Sherrill said, “they're not interested in going into a force as second-class citizens, and they're not interested in being given special treatment.”
“What they want is the challenge that all people that go into our military service want. What they want to do is to serve the public, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to make sure that people here can sleep at night,” said Sherrill, who is also running for governor of New Jersey. “And so, why you would ever put someone in charge that didn't respect that, that didn't respect the service of about 20 percent of our armed forces, is shocking to me.”
The implications stretch beyond the ranks of the Armed Forces, said Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, who served in the Air Force and Air Force Reserve. Changes that enabled women like her, Sherrill and others to serve in the military put them on the path to public service in Congress, she said.
“They served because we made some real reforms that mattered in how women are able to serve and what kind of roles they're able to serve in,” Houlahan said. “And I think it's not a coincidence that you then see those people, decades later, showing up in places like Congress, because they've had equal opportunity.”
The U.S. Senate vets and confirms the president’s nominees to Cabinet posts and other high-level positions. In some ways, Hegseth’s nomination and the scandal surrounding it are not new. The first time a new president’s initial Cabinet nominee was rejected was in 1989 when the Senate failed to confirm John Tower, former President George H.W. Bush’s pick for defense secretary, after he was accused of being an alcoholic womanizer.
Then Sen. Sam Nunn, a Democrat and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman at the time, led the charge against Tower’s nomination on the grounds that his character was unfit for the position.
“The committee is also concerned about the personal example the secretary of defense must set for efforts of the Department of Defense to end discrimination toward, and any sexual harassment of, women. … Mr. President, leadership must be established from the top down,” Nunn said during the 1989 Senate debate.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, has made it a priority of his tenure to combat sexual assault in the military, establishing a commission early on to make recommendations to the military. Meanwhile, Hegseth has signaled a different set of values and priorities when it comes to women and people of color. He wrote a book arguing that military standards have been lowered for women, that “America’s white sons and daughters” are walking away from the military because of ideology that is too “effeminate” and that diversity, inclusion and equity efforts are bad for national security.
“I’m straight up just saying we shouldn’t have women in combat roles," Hegseth said in November during a podcast interview. “It hasn’t made us more effective. It hasn’t made us more lethal. It has made fighting more complicated.”
On Wednesday, Hegseth mounted another lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill, meeting with several key Republican senators. GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, an Army veteran and a sexual assault survivor herself who has been outspoken against sexual assault in the military, posted on X that she had a “frank and thorough” conversation with Hegseth.
His mother, Penelope Hegseth, is also doing a media tour on behalf of her son after The New York Times reported on an email she sent him in 2018, in the midst of his contentious divorce from his second wife, excoriating Hegseth as an “abuser of women.” It is against military law to commit adultery, which could result in dishonorable discharge. Penelope Hegseth, who said she since apologized for and disavowed the contents of the email, took to Fox News with her hopes that lawmakers, “especially our female senators,” to “not listen to the media and that you will listen to Pete.”
Houlahan said she’s using the influence she has as a woman veteran in Congress to register her concerns with her colleagues in the Senate about Hegseth’s nomination.
“To the degree I can, I'm trying to have conversations, and directly have conversations with my Senate companions, to do my best to explain that I am really worried about this,” she said. “And I'm hoping that me being really worried is an indicator, a canary in the coal mine, of other people who are worried about it, who don't have the voice that I have.”
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