Small but mighty

"A group of us went to Nashville last spring, not just because of the attacks on public workers, but also because of the attacks on women's causes, attacks on the GLBC (Gay Lesbian Bi-sexual Community) and the attacks on people in general," Joyner said.

The small group of activists made headlines across the state after they were forcibly removed by Tennessee State Troopers from a legislative meeting and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

But not all activism involves protest and arrest — Joyner and fellow U of M graduate student Justin Sledge are among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Memphians who are part of small, like-minded groups trying to make a difference in the community. Some are caring for the homeless, some are giving job training or medical care to the disadvantaged, and some are reaching out to veterans who have returned to a cruel daily reality after serving their country.

Sledge and Joyner both credit early labor-related influences for their interest in activism and social justice.

"I've always worked since I was teenager," Joyner said. "From my first real job at Dixie Cafe, I became pretty amazed that women worked really hard full time and still had to depend on charities for their children's school needs, or just to have Thanksgiving."

Sledge said he came from a working class family.

"My dad was, and is, a pipe fitter," the 30-year-old philosophy major explained, "and seeing how workers are exploited and abused galvanized me into the labor movement in a general way, but also radical politics in a specific way."

Ironically, the elder Sledge doesn't share his son's pro-union stance.

"That was a conversation that I had with my dad as a young man, asking him why he was not in a union," the Jackson, Miss. native said. "And just seeing how the bosses kept folks out the union, and scared of the union, was what actually drove me into the union. I think my dad and I probably still disagree about the unions. He's one of those crotchety old southern guys who thinks unions are bought out by the mob, full of communists and things like that."

Sledge and Joyner have different views on the effectiveness of small versus large groups.

"Most of the work I've been involved with over the past few years has just been with small groups of activists getting together to work on different types of issues, through ad hoc organizational campaigns rather than through more traditional organizations," Joyner said. "That way we are flexible and can focus our energy on current events or local issues, from Arab Spring to the city budget, without having to fit our work into a particular organizational mission."

LAWYERS, DOCTORS AND TEACHERS

Occupying more than seven acres at the corner of Poplar and Goodlett is a large traditional-looking edifice that houses a congregation of nearly 4,000. But the members of Second Presbyterian Church support small and large ministries that reach into neighborhoods far beyond their East Memphis location.

Coordinating the effort is Eddie Foster, who gave up a successful law career more than five years ago to take on the role of Mission Memphis director at the church.

Foster said Second Presbyterian directly supports 49 ministries, and enthusiastically recites a litany of committed individuals and groups having a positive impact on inner city life. One of his favorite examples is Christ Community Health Services.

"Where there's not accessible healthcare services in some of the neediest areas of the city," Foster said, "that staff of doctors — maybe half of them — have not only given up lucrative medical practice careers, they are moving their families and living in these communities. That's a big-scale ministry and they're doing major, major things."

The commitment Foster describes in the small groups coming to the aid of their neighbors is reflected in his own decision to abruptly change his career path.

"I was at a place in life where I had been in private practice, then worked for a corporate client for a while," Foster, 63, explained. "I sort of decided that I wanted to do something other than practice law, so I sat down with my family and this opportunity developed to come here. I feel incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to do something totally different in life."

Although Foster's wife had been involved with inner city tutoring and he had served on various boards, he felt a longing to work more closely with the city's less fortunate citizens.

"You can't read the newspaper or watch the TV every night and not be distressed by all of the ills in our city," Foster lamented. "Much is broken, and that's sort of the focus of our church, and how we want to be involved. We want to be engaged with others who are trying to create healthy communities… in some of the distressed areas in our city."

He speaks glowingly about inner city youth teaming up with suburban kids for joint mission trips to New Orleans and about Berclair Elementary, a city school adopted by the church where a number of initiatives have been taken by a small group to serve the largely Hispanic student body and their parents.

"Schools are the crossroads of the neighborhood," Foster said. "Before our church was there, they had less than 10 or 20 people attend parent-teacher meetings. We have a Sunday school class that sponsors the meetings now, and we have two or three hundred (Berclair parents) come to it."

Second Presbyterian's Su Casa ministry also provides ESL classes and tutoring sessions four times weekly.

"We have probably 140 adults come to those," Foster said. "Volunteer teachers break up into small groups. That's been a great effort for us, and it's really rewarding."

Although the church works with ministries both large and small, Foster is quick to point out that even the most ambitious efforts start with small groups of committed individuals.

"I have been amazed at the number of ministries, many of them that are very small, neighborhood-based efforts — the effective work that is being done and the quality of leadership," he observed.

A BLUE TOYOTA AND A FILE CABINET IN THE TRUNK

One needs to drive less than seven miles to the west from the stately East Memphis church to find passion and commitment thriving in the state's poorest urban zip code.

In a cavernous warehouse-like room inside a building at 769 Vance, Steve Nash sits at a boardroom table in close proximity to drill presses, forklifts, a loud multi-headed embroidery machine and other various tools of many trades.

"This is my office now," Nash finally said. "I had to give up my office space to make room for more staff."

Advance Memphis started from scratch in May of 1999, "with a blue Toyota Camry and a plastic filing cabinet in the trunk," according to Nash.

"Our mission is to serve residents in the Cleaborn community with knowledge, resources and skills to be economically self-sufficient through the Gospel of Jesus Christ," explained Nash, who graduated with a degree in personnel management from the University of Memphis in 1988.

"So over the past 12 years we have grown to where we are today — owners of a 9,000 square foot facility," he continued. "We are graduating about 110 folks from a soft-job skills training class annually. We have just really hit stride and are finding our way with adult GED attainment, and this year to date we have had 10 adults receive their GED. We're an official testing site now."

Nash pointed out that a financial literacy class is part of the Advance Memphis curriculum, and that the ministry also extended what he called "mercy loans."

"We start each year with $1,500 and loan it out, so we've done 94 or 96 loans to date and had eight defaults," Nash calculated. "We have revolved that $1,500 over six times and have loaned out and repaid $9,500 from a community that is perceived as incapable of repayment."

He calls the perception of a diminished work ethic in the neighborhood "a myth" and claims that achievement in the workplace is entirely possible due to a strong desire to work and achieve academically.

He went on to express gratitude to a number of companies that outsource work through Advance Memphis. The ministry also depends upon guest lecturers and business professionals who visit daily classes, a host of volunteers who help with reading skills and local community colleges and technical schools that help prepare job seekers.

Inspired by a Harvard Business Review article dealing with Four Myths about the Inner City, and after hearing talks from home mission speakers at his church, Nash formed a small advisory board comprised of high school friends who had become business leaders, some older men from his church and non-profit ministry leaders. Initial plans were to launch a for-profit enterprise that would employ neighborhood men with an ultimate goal of turning majority ownership over to them for sustained economic activity, but the group decided on a non-profit training facility instead.

Nash cites Bubba Halliday, Clay Smythe, Howard Eddings, Ken Bennett and others as the nucleus of a group of volunteers who helped him launch Advance Memphis.

Twelve years later, with a staff of 15 and revenue exceeding $1.8 million annually, the 42-year-old Nash believes in the power of a small group to achieve a "ripple effect" as it relates to community ministry.

"In business a satisfied customer will tell another and the business grows," he said. "In my life, I've experienced men and women and a wife that have encouraged and believed in me, and that has been very supportive and encouraging to me to listen and love others and believe in them."

FORMER PRIEST AND WORRIED MOM HELP VETERANS

As a campus priest turned civil rights activist turned Army chaplain, Ed Wallin walked a long and varied path prior to finding himself placed in charge of an effort to bring Vietnam era veterans into VA treatment centers in 1980. According to Wallin, many vets were avoiding the centers because they viewed them as yet another military institution.

The campaign to attract veterans to the centers was successful — so much so that a problem surfaced after a few years.

"We noticed that when we closed at night some of these people had nowhere to go," Wallin said. "We were really puzzled about what we could do for these people. Miraculously, I had a black lady come in to visit my office — two of her sons had come back from Vietnam as psychological casualties, and while we were trying to help her and them, she asked the question, ‘Why are all of these people in here?'"

Wallin explained that some were waiting for counseling, some were waiting for state employment counselors and some of the others just had nowhere to go.

"She asked," Wallin recalled, "‘Well, what can we do about it?'"

When he asked if she had any ideas, Ola Mae Ranson answered her own question.

"She said, ‘Well, I could open up a house. I'll rent a place and maybe we could find some beds where some of these people could stay while they're getting treatment at the VA,'" Wallin explained. "Ms. Ranson said, ‘Well, you furnish me warm bodies, and I'll do the rest.'"

With that conversation, Ranson, with the help of Wallin and a small group of supporters, founded an organization in a small duplex that has now assisted more than 5,000 veterans.

Wallin's life is a testament to the power of small groups working to improve the lives of others.

As chaplain of the Catholic Campus Ministry at Memphis State University in the 1960s, the Father recruited a few supporters and led the initiative that successfully integrated the restaurants surrounding the campus. A member of the Air Force reserve, Wallin expanded his small group to integrate the restaurants around the Air Force facility on Democrat Road.

"And for my efforts, the John Birch Society labeled me as the number two communist in the city! I was very disappointed that I didn't get number one," Wallin jokes, "but another priest beat me out. He was trying to unionize the sanitation workers."

The activist priest was asked by his order to serve as a chaplain in Vietnam. Before leaving, however, Wallin accompanied Dr. Martin Luther King on a march down Highway 51 to Jackson, Miss.

But more changes were in store for the veteran priest upon his return.

"When I came home from Vietnam, I met my wife. It was love at first sight," he remembered. "I had pledged my life to poverty, obedience and chastity, yet she helped change my life. I decided I had to go back to school at the age of 42 and get myself a marketable degree — a psychiatric master's degree in social work at Fordham University in New York. When I returned to Memphis, I was immediately employed by the Veterans Medical Center."

For the next 32 years Wallin worked with impaired veterans, specializing in the assessment and treatment of post-traumatic stress until his wife's illness forced retirement. She died of brain cancer in 2005.

Wallin, now 83, met a former nun in a grief group he organized and married her. Together, the couple continues to work for civil rights, social justice and to champion the cause of homeless veterans through volunteer work with the VA and Alpha Omega.

Wallin said he never forgot the lesson learned from Ola Mae Ranson, the lady in the vet center whose question stirred them to action.

"My present wife and I believe that the greatest way to gain the goals of change is through small groups — grassroots level," Wallin said.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Timberly Moore points toward a corner in her north Memphis neighborhood and recalls frightening scenes from her childhood.

"When we were younger, that corner right there where the yellow building is, there were drug dealers standing out there and across the street on this little block. They were literally coked up right there," said the University of Memphis senior. "And the children would see that when they went to the store. When I went to Northside High School, I remember seeing that on the corner, but I noticed that the more we became involved in the community, the less of it I would see."

Moore, 23, had an upbringing immersed in community involvement. She explained that her mother made sure of that.

"Saturday, we were out in the neighborhood picking up, cleaning up trash," Moore said.

Moore and her sister, Faith, stood behind an old firehouse at the corner of Faxon and Decatur describing the Youth United with Senior Citizens ministry their mother, Vicky Moore, started in 1991. Seniors would have their homes cleaned by youth volunteers. The only payment required was to share their life experiences. The concept was simple, but the results were far-reaching.

"They taught us about self respect and respect for others," said Timberly. "I was right there with her. I was four or five years old picking up trash in the community. I had on the big gloves and the garbage bags were taller than me. And it wasn't like, ‘Oh, do you want to do this?'"

"We had to be there," Faith added.

The elder sister, a graduate student studying public administration at Strayer University, explained that even before the ministry was established, the family learned the value of service.

"Before she actually started this portion of the ministry, on her own she had us go every Thanksgiving and Christmas to serve the homeless on those holidays," said Faith, 31.

Now meals are served at noon the first and third Saturdays of each month and to the homeless and hungry every Sunday in the bright red former firehouse. Timberly said the ministry's short-term goal is to expand the serving of free meals to every Saturday, if donations make it possible.

The old firehouse at 1010 Faxon, just south of the Jackson Ave. exit on Interstate 240, was sold for one dollar to Vicky Moore 15 years ago by former mayor Willie W. Herenton after he heard a report that she was instrumental in breaking up a gang of Gangster Disciples operating in the neighborhood.

Neither sister was quite sure why their mother, who was out of town on business during the interview, painted the building bright red, but they pointed out that the city supplied no funding for improvements. Vicky Moore, who left a job in the corporate offices of FedEx, spent funds from her own pocket to expand the growing ministry that also supplies clothes and basic necessities to neighbors in need.

When temperatures dropped severely during the last two winters, the old fire station has also served as a shelter for the homeless. Dismayed that the city's warming tents were closed when temperatures reached a certain level, Faith said her mother once again took action.

"My mom said, ‘I have this space, I'm going to open it up.' There were so many cots in here it was like a maze," she recalled.

Though the ministry receives some support from Hope Presbyterian Church, it has remained officially non-denominational.

"My mom was really careful about who she wanted to work with. Now we work with Hope, and they are awesome," Timberly said. "Anything that they can do, they're up for it."

The Moore sisters have learned firsthand the impact one family can have on a community.

"My mom says everybody is a role model," Timberly said. "We have good role models and bad role models. In this inner city community, we've had some bad models — crackheads, drug dealers and prostitutes. She wanted to show the kids something different."

Turning to go back inside and assist with the Saturday feeding, Timberly offered one last thought.

"The world is comprised of leaders and followers," she observed. "But you cannot lead until you learn to follow. Until you learn what it means to serve, you cannot be a leader. That is why my mom had us out there every Saturday serving the elderly in the community, serving the homeless in the community and serving the community as a whole."