Swan Dive

Income inequality and generational poverty have decimated the American Dream. How does one claw their way out of a deep hole if the walls are too steep and slippery to climb. David Garfunkel has dedicated his life to solving this systemic problem. As President & CEO of the non-profit LIFT JAX, David brings business and community leaders together to eradicate generational poverty in Jacksonville, FL. And it’s not just lofty talk and abstraction. LIFT JAX has created meaningful and measurable community revitalization initiatives in Jacksonville’s Eastside, located less than a mile from downtown. "OutEast" is widely considered to be one of Jacksonville’s most important historically African-American neighborhoods, home to many noteworthy sites in African-American culture dating back to the mid-1800s. LIFT JAX focuses on culturally rich, generationally inclusive, and economically diverse neighborhoods for children and families, where social connections across socioeconomic and racial demographics are commonplace. Legacy residents feel valued and are part of the fabric of the growing community with newer residents. The built environment and investments in physical infrastructure support the ability for the community to thrive. And, all residents feel welcomed, valued, and integral to the composition of their neighborhood. Using the Purpose Built Communities model, grounded in the foundational beliefs that race and place matter, makes it possible for residents to experience greater racial equity, improved health outcomes, and increased upward mobility in their neighborhoods. For example, LIFT JAX has reopened the beloved Debs Store as a community wellness anchor that provides easy access to healthy food. The store was a neighborhood staple for more than 90 years and left the Eastside a food desert after closing. In addition, they're working to activate parks and green spaces by improving the infrastructure to better support activities for families. These basic lifestyle improvements make a house a home and a neighborhood a village. His journey toward social justice began straight out of college, where he received a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. David joined the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, where he served for three years in the area of community economic development. Following the 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti, he moved to Port-au-Prince, where he led a rural loan and education program for Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest microfinance institution. Have a Swan Dive to share? Text us! We are always looking for Swan Dive Stories to share so hit us up, send an e mail to Ron: Ron@artbikesjax.com or Stu: Stuart@stuartsheldon.com

Nate Monroe writes a column about Florida for USA Today, exploring how power works in the gilded, strange human heart of the modern Republican Party. His intrepid  irony and rapier wit have made him a reader favorite but have also ruffled some significant feathers. Previously an investigative reporter for Jacksonville's Florida Times-Union, Nate focused on covering Jacksonville City Hall, the largest municipal government in Florida. His most notable deep-dive exposed a massive, nefarious scheme to sell Jacksonville's city-owned power company to Florida Power & Light ... and led to an indictment and jail time for the local CEO, an enormous win for justice and transparency. For this excellent work, he was surveilled and threatened. Nate says, “It was obviously surreal to open a batch of records that I had some sense was about the controversy and to actually discover that there was stuff about me in there” - his full Social Security number, driver’s license and a list of friends dating back to childhood — information not readily available as a public record. Nate's lived experience as a target of attack on the media and honest reporting is emblematic of the challenges facing democracy today. Still, Nate loves his job; he's built for it. An old school journalist who came up through the ranks, Nate remains undaunted about speaking truth to power. Prior to arriving in Jacksonville in 2013, he was a small town beat reporter for newspapers in the Deep South, where he wrote about hurricanes, small-town corruption, oil spills, Army Corps screw-ups, Mardi Gras, and bingo nights at the senior citizens center. Nate's work is absolutely critical to keeping our democracy healthy and alive.  Have a Swan Dive to share? Text us! We are always looking for Swan Dive Stories to share so hit us up, send an e mail to Ron: Ron@artbikesjax.com or Stu: Stuart@stuartsheldon.com

The Stanford Arts Review described Samantha Rose Williams as a “Mezzo-Soprano with ‘jaw-dropping vocal power.” This opera singer and arts activist is committed to creating space for critical discussion about art, culture, and social change. Her latest project is American Patriots, an opera she created that seeks to examine patriotism from four vastly different perspectives: African-American, Native American,  New American and white Working-Class American. For this piece, Samantha asked 50 Americans from diverse racial, socio economic, political, cultural and gender backgrounds to answer the question, “What is a patriot?” Their verbatim answers became the lyrics for her newest opera, which she sings magnificently. She hopes that through sharing nuanced stories of people of all backgrounds and beliefs, she can be a part of breaking down the walls of “us and other” and help to create a more sympathetic and equitable world. Have a Swan Dive to share? Text us! We are always looking for Swan Dive Stories to share so hit us up, send an e mail to Ron: Ron@artbikesjax.com or Stu: Stuart@stuartsheldon.com

Daniel K. Forkkio is CEO of Represent Justice, building a critical mass of “system-impacted storytellers” using film and media to mobilize audiences to take action and transform the legal system. Because, those closest to the problem are closest to the solution. About this transformational approach to filmmaking, Daniel says, “What I started to learn about these (grassroots) films is that the films themselves were part of the reconciliation process for the person that had gone through a (traumatic) experience. And so, the act of writing down what had happened, thinking about their audience, the different characters ... and what were the myths around those characters. And what did they want the audience to do and think and feel concerned about, allowed for a reconciliation of all of the different frames that they had been told about their story … and allowed for a different level of control and empowerment around their story. And then, with the film screening, they could go to their local community, their local council members, their local community partners and they could just gather people differently. When you learn together, and when you learn someone’s story and see how it connects to yours, it just creates this inspiration and this understanding that allows you to tell your story more effectively.” In the 5 years since inception, RJ now has people in 20 different states producing films & campaigns about their own lived experience, learning and growing from one another in ways that are completely transformative. RJ provides training, support, compensation and mental health resources ... all of which culminates in folks being able to produce a campaign about their unique personal experience rather than relying on whatever Hollywood has produced most recently. For this exceptional work Daniel was recently named a 2024 Elevate Prize winner, chosen alongside 9 other nonprofit leaders from across the globe for leading some of the most impactful missions to change our world for the better. RJ began as part of the impact campaign for the highly acclaimed Hollywood film, Just Mercy, starring Jamie Foxx and Michael Jordan, about the life of acclaimed public interest lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, and the civil rights work he does helping the incarcerated and the condemned. A policy expert conversant in the film's core issues, Daniel witnessed something remarkable at the screening and advocacy events he organized for Just Mercy - the unexpected impact of the people present connecting with each other through their own real life stories of similar lived experience. Says Daniel, "It got me thinking … what about this power of firsthand storytelling should extend beyond a campaign? What if we we were constantly working with folks who were impacted by this issue and, in fact, what if they were the ones producing the film? What if it wasn’t a matter of a Hollywood actor? What if it wasn’t as much a matter of a studio release? What if impacted folks, in their communities, had these skills of convening and using film as a medium? And, that became really the blueprint for Represent Justice."  Learn more and watch some of these magnificent films at RepresentJustice.org @danielforkkio @werepjus Have a Swan Dive to share? Text us! We are always looking for Swan Dive Stories to share so hit us up, send an e mail to Ron: Ron@artbikesjax.com or Stu: Stuart@stuartsheldon.com