Welcome to the first ever blog for Community Spring! We are a non-profit organization that is spurring economic mobility and dismantling structural poverty at a grassroots level. We use a direct job-creation model that employs people in poverty to address the systemic issues that they identify as contributing to poverty. Community Spring fellows cultivate collective power through community organizing and advocacy. They seek to break down the systems that keep them down. And they get paid a fair wage to do it.
Our direct-job creation model - with the twin pillars of income and power - has never been done before. We are only seven weeks into our first fellowship class, and we have been met with a flurry of excitement from the community. We have reached 8,800 people on social media, testified at the Gainesville City Commission, been featured in three different media outlets (The Gainesville Sun, CBS-4, and WUFT), hosted a successful community building event, and engaged with impacted people, community leaders, the faith-based community, policymakers, and local businesses. It is clear that Gainesville is ready for change and looking for a new approach.
“They represent new hope and the brand of grassroots leadership that long has been missing in remedying injustices that persist despite time and money poured into solutions that proved to be insufficient.
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Grassroots power is at the core of our model. At Community Spring, we believe the answers to the community’s problems need to come from the people experiencing those issues. Too often, well-intentioned people provide services and solutions without asking first what people want and need. Community Spring wants to reverse this approach. Let’s ask first. Let’s listen first. Let’s pay the people living in impacted communities to address the poverty that plagues their neighbors, their families, and themselves. We want to stand alongside the communities we serve - not above them.
The inaugural class of fellows is comprised of five people with a long history of personal experience with structural poverty and a passion for building stronger communities. (Check out their bios on our website to learn more about this powerful crew.) During the first two weeks on the job, our fellows dug deep into their past to determine how to reshape their future. Through storytelling and consensus building exercises, all five fellows determined that they wanted to focus their work on the criminal justice system, which they identified as perpetuating the cycle of poverty for entire communities in Gainesville - particularly low-income communities of color.
All of our fellows have been deeply impacted by incarceration, and they all agreed that there is a serious lack of support when people are re-entering society after incarceration. These returning citizens struggle to get back on their feet when they are thrown back out into the world with no emotional or financial support while facing excessive barriers to employment and housing.
Hiring policies that exclude people with criminal records have led to an unemployment rate of over 27% among formerly incarcerated people — a rate higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during the Great Depression. Landlords legally discriminate against people with criminal records, and as a result returning citizens are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public. Severe homelessness and housing insecurity increase recidivism and cost taxpayers millions.
Community Spring fellows envision a community where returning citizens are welcomed with open arms and given support to thrive in their new lives. To accomplish this goal, our fellows are building out a campaign called Torchlighters Re-Entry Support. Fellows are organizing an in-person support group, providing virtual support via a warmline and social media, compiling resources for returning citizens in Alachua County, developing a communications campaign that educates and humanizes people with criminal records, engaging employers to reform their hiring policies, and advocating for restrictions on the use of criminal background checks in housing applications.
We encourage you to get involved by checking out Torchlighters Re-Entry Support website and the Torchlighters Facebook group which houses information on all our activities and updates on how you can get involved. Please help us spread the word! As Community Spring Fellow, Kevin Scott says, “We’ve become all too well-adjusted to this revolving door of incarceration. What returning citizens need is a chance to prove their hearts and minds. They need advocacy and solidarity.” We hope that Torchlighters Re-Entry Support can be a part of that solution.