Chronicling Governance at an Existential Moment

As I write, the nation is engulfed in what can only be labeled an existential crisis that finds its central institutions and aspirations under profound threat by leaders and allies of one of its major political parties, the GOP, who have shown themselves willing to lie about anything and everything in the present presidential campaign. As Trump and his Party call for throwing tens of thousands of civil servants out of their jobs and replacing them with partisan cronies, and mobilizing United States Armed Forces against citizens and groups they have targeted for hate based on often-violent rhetoric and vileness, it occurred to me it might be useful to profile briefly six projects here at the Institute that offer examples of activities that are actually occurring in government and civil society. These projects provide an alternate and factually informing view of the range and complexity of governance issues and initiatives in our polity.  Taken together, these efforts suggest that U.S. governments and civil society organizations at all scales and across policy domains are striving to address complex social, economic and cultural concerns in accord with the law and are doing so as effectively and equitably as they can. Many of those concerns are not “fixable” in an abstract sense, since they inhere in citizen behavior and choices that, however lamentable they may be, it is the individuals’ right to make. All of these projects appear in our recently released 2023-2024 annual report, which, you may access here: https://ipg.vt.edu/content/dam/ipg_vt_edu/2023-2024%20IPG%20Annual%20Report_v2%209.25.24.pdf

Roanoke City and Allegheny Health District Community Engagement Initiative: VTIPG is working with the Roanoke City and Allegheny Health District on a three-year process to improve that agency’s community engagement strategies and data collection, and to make those approaches part of its ongoing operations, with the goal of continually assessing and refining service delivery while ensuring its programming reflects community-articulated needs.

The Virginia Management Fellows (VMF) Program: A group of Institute faculty and staff are working in close partnership with the Commonwealth’s Department of Human Resource Management to develop the next generation of leaders for all branches of state government. The partners offer a learning and capacity building program that includes a two-year paid position as a Fellow.

NIH Studies To Advance Recovery Support (STARS): Institute faculty have been instrumental in the Studies To Advance Recovery Support initiative, a thematic, stakeholder-focused research network that aims to generate trainings, tools and platforms targeted to the implementation and study of peer recovery support services for individuals under treatment for opioid use disorder, an epidemic in our region. The STARS Network provides high-priority research on peer recovery support services to assist individuals with opioid use disorder.

The Pathway Home Program: VTIPG and Roanoke’s nonprofit Total Action for Progress are partnering once again, in this case, to implement a multi-year U. S. Department of Labor grant that helps people in jails, prisons and Community Corrections Facilities in this region return to their communities, find jobs and avoid re-incarceration. Pathway Home supports participants every step of the way, from before release to a full year following. Other partners in this initiative include the Bradley Free Clinic; Greater Roanoke Workforce Development Board; Roanoke City Adult Detention Center; Botetourt-Craig Jail; Roanoke County-Salem Jail; Western Virginia Regional Jail and the Virginia Department of Corrections.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA-United States Department of Health and Human Services) Evaluation Team: The Institute’s team has provided grant performance evaluation and outcome assessments, data management and analyses of National Outcomes data, as well as technical assistance services on several SAMHSA funded grants for two southwest Virginia mental health agencies: Mount Rogers Community Services (MRCS) in Wytheville, Va., and the New River Valley Community Services clinics in Blacksburg and Radford, Va. Additionally, the team has conducted Community Needs Assessments for each locality within the two service areas.

Reimagining the Calfee Training Institute: An Institute team has been studying and   supporting the efforts of a group of Calfee Training School alumni to reimagine that facility, which functioned as a “separate and unequal” Jim Crow era school for Black children in Pulaski, Va., before closing, with desegregation, in 1966. As envisioned, the facility will offer a much-needed state of the art childcare center (now open), a community kitchen, a museum celebrating the role the school played in the historic 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and other community services as well. While the initiative has been led by Black alumni of the school, it has attracted a cross section of supporters in the community, whose voters nonetheless gave Donald Trump 70 percent of their presidential votes in 2020. Put plainly, this citizen group is seeking to use the Jim Crow era building for the good of all the area’s citizens, regardless of their ideology, race, creed, religion, ethnicity or gender. This is occurring as Trump is seeking to rally voters based on racial animus and arguments their tax dollars are being “wasted” on undeserving minorities. Yet, this civil society group is imagining a different and inclusive course for its community; one that acknowledges the citizenship and dignity of all who reside there.

        This snapshot of a small share of the Institute’s research and activities suggests three basic conclusions. First, each contradicts the fearmongering, misogynist and racist rhetoric of today’s GOP. In nearly every case here, governments (federal, state and local) are working together to address extremely complex policy and governance concerns. Far from simply blaming those served for the issues they are confronting or arguing that only those Americans with vast resources or specific views should be engaged, they are working diligently to assist all members of the groups profiled. Irrespective of the initiative outlined here, those advancing them are doing so without first checking skin color, national origin or ideology or any other characteristic at the proverbial door.

        Second, these efforts are reasonably framed and overwhelmingly practically focused to address the concrete issues these public entities are seeking to address on behalf of the citizens they serve. Doing so is often extraordinarily complex, sometimes vexingly so, as our heterogeneous polity can prove as well, but all are working in good faith to serve their neighbors and the common weal.  Finally, and as testimony to the possibility that inheres in the innate pluralism of our nation, the Calfee project is now being led by citizens who once went to school each day in that facility when its very existence was a symbol of their oppression by an unjust society. Far from seeking to claim some sort of revenge for that profound injustice, however, this group is seeking instead to reimagine and reuse the historic structure to serve the needs of all of today’s Pulaski citizens, the opposite of the Trumpian call to punish innocents on grounds of their origin, skin color or sexuality.

        In sum, if one uses these programs as a sampling of government and civil society activities at all scales to address difficult challenges confronting their communities and citizens, the upshot is that those offering them are working conscientiously to do so while recognizing those problems are not easy to address, much less to remedy. The individuals managing those programs are also seeking to serve all citizens in lieu of scapegoating some for political or ideological gain. I find that fact bracing, as this nation soon will decide whether it will remain a republic of laws worthy of that description. The Institute will continue to work with government and civil society entities at all scales to assist them in their efforts to serve the country’s citizens as effectively, equitably and efficiently as they can, so long as we are able to do so.