'Taste' event spotlights study circles

Longtime program thrives in Aurora, Ill.

by Julie Fanselow

May 8, 2007 | | Aurora, Illinois

 

 

Earlier this spring, we ran a story about how the Community Wide Dialogue to End Racism in Syracuse, New York, uses a duck race to raise funds and awareness. In Aurora, Illinois, study circle supporters employ another popular technique – a community food festival – to raise money and spread the word about study circles in Illinois’ second-largest city.

Downtown Aurora Taste, held each year on the second Tuesday in May, is an opportunity for people to meet, mingle, and eat while supporting study circles. People pay $25 for a ticket book, then stroll or ride a double-decker bus to sample food from 10 local restaurants. Live entertainment and door prizes like White Sox baseball tickets sweeten the deal.

The “Taste” grows in popularity each year: 700 people bought tickets last year, and another good crowd was expected for the 2007 event on May 8. “We get people downtown and interacting in an atmosphere of diversity,” says Aurora Community Study Circles (ACSC) executive director Mary Jane Hollis. The event also spotlights local businesses, some of them minority-owned.

 

Aurora Study Circles Executive Director Mary Jane Hollis poses with a plaque proclaiming April 28, 2006, A Day of Dialogue. Courtesy: ACSC

Aurora has been holding dialogues for more than 10 years, and a new round of Circles of Understanding started in April. Last year, to mark the organization’s 10th anniversary, about 400 people took part in a citywide Day of Dialogue. Many good connections were made that day.

For example, Steve Luckman is the director of Carpenter’s Place Aurora, an organization that coordinates holistic case management for the city’s homeless people. He sat in a dialogue facilitated by ACSC board member Maria Castro, community affairs manager for the local Comcast cable TV company, and later contacted her to talk more about Carpenter’s Place and its work. Castro arranged for Luckman to appear on several public affairs shows.

Shirley Flaherty is a member of a local grassroots group called River Shore Vision Plan that is working to safeguard the Fox River. She told about this work at the Day of Dialogue, and another participant, Marva Bates, decided to join RSVP as a result. Flaherty credits Bates’ later testimony to Aurora City Council for helping the successful passage of a shoreline protection plan.

ACSC also runs the Many Young Voices school-based study circles. Begun in the late 1990s in local high schools, the program now takes place in area middle schools, too, with hundreds of students participating each year. Following a recent round of circles, students pledged to start an anti-bullying group, speak out when they hear unfair or discriminatory remarks, and volunteer in the community.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page recently keynoted a dinner to benefit Many Young Voices. Past Aurora study circle participants also have launched a Multicultural Book Club to read and discuss recent literature from a variety of ethnic and religious perspectives.

 

Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page speaks with guests after his keynote at the Many Young Voices benefit dinner. Courtesy: ACSC

ACSC is impressive both for its longevity – it’s one of the nation’s oldest study circle programs – as well as for its broad impact. Within two years after study circles began in Aurora, nearly a thousand people had taken part – over the past eight years, that number has grown to more than 6,000. Describing the program in 1997, Martha McCoy and Matt Leighninger of the Study Circles Resource Center wrote, “Aurora has become a model for communities and citizen involvement efforts around the country.” This year, Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner called ACSC “the conscience of the community.”

The organization also enjoys strong support from the local newspaper, the Beacon News. Many newsroom staffers have taken part in Circles of Understanding, and the newspaper recently launched a new Voice section featuring human-interest stories that reflect the city’s diversity.

Amaal V.E. Tokars, a past president of the ACSC board, says the circles have helped foster a culture in Aurora where respectful dialogue among diverse people is becoming customary. Weisner agrees. “I think there’s a greater openness and understanding, community wide,” he says. “For the size of our community, I think we are farther along than most of our neighbors.”

Study circles have surged at a time of great growth and demographic change in Aurora. In 1990, the city’s population stood at 99,672 – about 64 percent white, 23 percent Latino, and 12 percent black. Aurora’s population has since soared to about 175,000 people, and, today, about a third of the residents are Latino.

 

Aurora high school students take part in a dialogue as part of ASCS's Many Young Voices program. Courtesy: SPLC

Aurora Police Chief Bill Powell says that although it’s hard to quantify, he believes study circles have made a difference in managing the city’s rapid growth and change.

 “I think people are afraid to lay their souls bare in a public setting, but if you’re able to do that, you grow,” notes Powell, the city’s first African- American police chief. Powell took part in one of the earliest Circles of Understanding, and he encourages all his officers and other police personnel to try it, too.

 “You see things a little bit differently, and you tend to start respecting and become more aware of other people’s feelings,” Powell adds. “That’s when you become human.”

For more information on Aurora Community Study Circles, click here.

Learn more: Diversity  | Racial Equity