I like to put things in musical terms, likely because I am a musician. For me, the most valuable aspect of all of these Seminars, has been the ability to compare the art, history, science, and sociology of New York, and other urban areas, to musical development and progression. Throughout its history, music has functioned to bring the community together in some way. Jazz, which flourished in the areas most susceptible to urban renewal, has consistently been a product of the people playing it and listening to it. You can even track the gentrification of Jazz music around this time.

When Fullilove discussed the Essex Chorale I immediately saw it as the clearest example of a consistant community for the citizens of Essex County. Their music is able to emotionally sync with its listeners; this characteristic that singers strive for is inherently present in this choir.

So, what role does music play in the establishment of community?

A neighborhood can offer social supports that are difficult to replace and essential to an individual’s quality of life. These social supports are implicit to public health. Individuals in a tight knit community walk freely to local destinations, have more information about members of the community, and have a greater sense of security. While these community qualities may be taken for granted by many, these qualities can facilitate a healthy lifestyle. In the novel, Fullilove mentions that elderly individuals removed from their community could not walk to the stores, and many became ill.

While one may think of a community facilitating good public health by making tangible public resources available to its members, the social supports it offers are invaluable as well. While community has been largely defined as a physical space in Root Shock, we have different definitions of community today. Communities have moved into the online realm with greater technological advancements. What can we expect if we were suddenly taken offline? Would it have the same effect as those in Roanoke?

As I read this book, only one thing kept flying through my mind. I really couldn’t understand it at first, but it kept appearing. It was a feeling that couldn’t be stated until the book said it for me. Someone, I can’t find it now, said that the community was a place where you could walk in the dark and feel safe. That truly hit home for me because I know how that feels. My community is very much the same way. And the every story detailed a little bit of the experience of being within a community. It truly felt like Director David Riker said. Dr. Fullilove was able to tell the story of many communities without having been in one simply because she learned how to tell their stories.

My question is simple: What other factors make up a community? And what connection does Dr. Fullilove have to these stories? As a psychiatrist, does she believe Root shock is a medical condition?

This section made me think about how important it is for children to have a steady sense of home, of having one place where they make connections, learn to trust people and feel supported.  It became clear to me in reading David’s tragic story, in how even through his rough family life he found strength in his surrounding community.  It wasn’t perfect, and it didn’t prevent the abuse, but it was much better than living in an isolated apartment complex where no one knows you.  David also had the wildlife preserve as a refuge of sorts and a place to develop his interests.  However, after urban renewal, this community where he was raised was no more.  And even as David returned with Fullilove, the area looked less and less like the place where he was raised, new commercial buildings in the place of houses where community members used to live, and he learned of deaths only by visiting.  It was interesting to me that even in places where David had so much suffering in his community, like where he waited while his mom went to the liquor store, he still was saddened by how much it had changed.  It was as though the only pieces of the neighborhood that provided him comfort and safety had been destroyed.  I also noticed that it almost took the death of his mother and coming to peace with his childhood that he could ever find “home.”  I think it speaks volumes when a homeless shelter is a person’s first true sense that they belong somewhere.

In seeing how David’s life progressed, I couldn’t help but think of the old maxim “it takes a village to raise a child.”  Urban renewal may seek to make economic advancements for the community, but at what cost? How can they justify displacing a social and economic support system for so many?

-Jacqui Larsen

Reading these chapters, I wondered how so many people could live so close to each other and have community, yet when problems arise, the sense of community disappears. Arleen Ollie’s experience interested me in that she moved away from her neighborhood because of financial reasons and when she returned to Roanoke, the sense of community was lost. She emphasized how in the past if people were sick it, it was natural for help to come quickly and people did not have to be asked for help. David’s journey was also interesting in that he was able to see the changes of Elmwood and eventually its loses. There was different emphasize on kindness and how there were kindness in situations such as in gardening, dancing, selling goods, and other professions. However, this kindness did not stop the violence that was happening in child molestation and unemployment.

My question is similar to Jessina’s in that does a community need to be poor in order for kindness to occur and also, besides for the fact that people in a community lived near each other, what other things tied them together?

Throughout the book, Fullilove includes anecdotes about how urban renewal happened in places that were thought to have nothing in the first place, but yet there was so much lost.  The neighborhoods were poor and dirty.  Outsiders thought that there was no way for these places to get worse, so anything they did to them could only be an improvement.  However, in all of these neighborhoods, lives were lost.  I don’t mean it in the sense that people died, but the way the people were used to living was lost.  People went from generally supportive and kind neighborhoods to ones where people were mean and purposely distanced themselves from others.  While the people who left their neighborhoods due to urban renewal were still kind, the areas that they moved to did not let them practice that kindness.  That is why the kindness disappeared.  So far, I keep hearing about how people have moved from poor but loving neighborhoods to wealthier but more isolated neighborhoods.  My question is: does a neighborhood have to be poor for the people to feel a sense of community?

As Fullilove continues to talk about the urban renewal projects that destroyed places like Roanoke, Virginia, I can’t stop thinking of these people. As if their lives weren’t bad enough to begin with, (they were of low status economically and lived in slums that were eventually deemed “blighted”) they only became worse. These individuals didn’t have much to begin with, yet they lost it anyway. It is amazing how society often makes a fuss over situations when well-off families and neighborhoods lose everything they have, (in a tragedy, disaster,etc.) yet when the poor lose their homes, cultures, and overall sense of identity, it is alright because it is “for the good of the city.” The comment that councilwoman Mary Pickett made a few pages into Chapter 4 especially stood out to me. It ended with, “some people had to suffer.” Basically, what I got out of that was that the individuals living in neighborhoods that underwent urban renewal (African Americans in this case) were in some way the sacrificial lamb. But why was this the path that was taken? If the goal of urban renewal had to do with fixing the land and neighborhoods themselves, why couldn’t they do so in such a way that displacement and root shock would not occur? Or, if displacement and root shock were inevitable, why couldn’t they provide more immediate support to the communities? If they couldn’t provide homes from everyone, the least that could have been done was to provide individuals who may be experiencing stress or trauma with some kind of psychological help, such as counseling.