A few days ago, we held our first in-person rural Solutions Circle in Lexington, Miss., located about an hour from Jackson. Calling it “fantastic” would be an understatement. For those unfamiliar, our Solutions Circles are community-led discussions where anyone can participate, provided they agree to our ground rules, most of which involve respectful dialogue. Attendees write down three or four challenges on sticky notes as they enter, which our team quickly organizes into topic areas. You won’t be surprised that most communities, no matter how divided they may seem on the surface, share common concerns.
Participants then choose which discussion group to join. During the first half of the conversation, they explore the challenges their community faces. For the second part of the conversation, folks talk about solutions. Some of these conversations reveal that communities are successfully tackling challenges.
Take, for example, our Black Women and COVID reporting project, where we learned that community members in Noxubee County had created internet hubs to combat rural broadband access that was inadequate before the pandemic but buckled under the weight of increased use as we hunkered down at home to work and attend school. Our virtual Solutions Circles showed us that lots of Mississippi households had enough tablets, laptops and phones, but the internet couldn’t hold up under the weight of increased use. Reporting this simple solution, while not a resolution for underserved communities, helped us show other Mississippians ways to combat a problem that most of us didn’t anticipate.
What we found in Lexington, as we do in every Solutions Circle, is that our fellow Mississippians are brilliant. Despite the narratives pushed by horse-race reporting and partisan dog whistles, people are more alike than you might think. Communities are not monolithic, and real solutions emerge when people both talk and listen to one another.
The circles help guide our reporting. Daily news is urgent and essential. We do need to know what’s happening in our municipal meetings, and if a life-threatening storm is headed our way, that’s happening more and more with global warming. Yet we also need to think and talk deeply about the systems that are affecting us for better or worse.
I often hear Donna Ladd, our CEO and head editor, and Ashton Pittman, our news editor, talk about the cyclical nature of corruption. See the former Mississippi Department of Corrections head who pleaded guilty in 2015 to accepting bribes in exchange for prison contracts, to the recent headline-grabbing TANF mess, where public money meant for mothers and children instead went to some of Mississippi’s wealthiest. We see the rinse-and-repeat cycle in most communities across the nation. Some people go to prison and some folks don’t. Some people pay the money back, and some don’t, but I’ll bet you all the land I’m set to inherit in Clarke County (I have no idea whether I’m actually set to inherit, but one can hope) that the next scandal is only a year or two away. So the question is not if it’s going to happen—because it will—but why it keeps happening, and how do we correct a system that lets it continue?
That brings me back to our Lexington circle. I sat in on the education circle, where an energetic group of mostly educators and parents discussed parent engagement. Some were frustrated with low parent engagement, and at least one young mother explained the challenges of working full-time, caring for children and/or elders, and attending parent meetings and conferences.
Just like the internet hubs in Noxubee County, they had already found one solution. At least one school created a festive event with food and less structure to encourage parents’ engagement. Isn’t that a fantastic idea? I don’t have kids, and it’s tough enough to get myself fed, let alone another human. Frankly, who wants to sit in hard school chairs after a long day at work? I have it on good authority that a lot has changed in schools, but the seating is still built for the young.
The Bible has a parable about new wine in old wineskins. Solutions Circles help us put new wine in new wineskins, allowing better, people-centered ideas to bubble to the top. We are convening circles around the state. If you’d like to join one or help us convey one, please email kiden@mississippifreepress.org. I hope to see you soon at a circle near you.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
