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Jim Wise: All right, this is Jim Wise for the Durham Public Library. It’s July 27^(th), 2012 and we are speaking with Jennifer McGovern at her home in Trinity Park. Good afternoon and it’s very pleasant in here for a very hot afternoon out there. Thank you very much for your time. Well we can start at just about anywhere in your long and somewhat rather varied career. I was particularly interested in learning that you had been a campus minister at NC Central. Jennifer McGovern: Yes, I was. Not an official campus minister but I was the secretary for the campus ministry over there when our, I guess I was pregnant with our oldest and then pregnant with our younger one. And, and for part of it we had an interim situation going so I ended up doing a fair amount of program work. But we were in Chidley Hall, which is the men’s dormitory and I get the biggest kick out of telling people that I worked in Chidley Hall. (laughs) But it was still, I believe that Michael Page holds that position now, for the Ecumenical Campus Ministry. . Jim Wise: I believe that’s correct. I know he has a position over there. Well that’s really interesting. How did you happen to come to the work? Jennifer McGovern: You know, the way that I got the job was that we, at that time we were going to Kerr Methodist Church, which now is Good Shepherd, and the pastor there was David Harvin and he was, I think he was either on the board or knew someone on that board, was an ecumenical board of all the judicatories that contributed to that Campus Ministry and they were looking for a secretary, and I’d been doing, I’d opened with Another Thyme, so I’d been doing restaurant work and was ready to change to something else.

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Jim Wise; Well had you had ambitions or aspirations toward Ministry yourself? Previously? Jennifer McGovern: I have this strong opinion that um, you should only go to Seminary if your called, like called to got to Seminary. (laughs) And I’ve, I mean I consider myself in Ministry with my tutoring businesses to me is a from of Ministry among other that I, I’m on the Board of Achievement Academy but I don’t, I feel like if anything there’s too much emphasis on getting the formal training and not enough on lay leadership. So I’ve chosen the lay leadership. Jim Wise: That seems to be a, a trend at least in some (cross talk) to emphasize lay Leadership Jennifer McGovern: No, the Methodists I think have always been strong in it, but, but our older daughter was part of inner varsity and then servant partners and they are very strong on you know, you don’t, Seminary training is not a presumed path. Service is the presumed path, and then you know if you feel called to something more than you pursue it.

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Jim Wise: So what did you start out to do? I understand you were a student at Duke. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, I ended up with an English major, but really I had a Liberal Arts Degree from Duke University. I started out to teach, and my sophomore year I did training at Hillside. They were very, got you into a classroom quickly. And I don’t remember my thought process then but I realized that it wasn’t the right time for me to be a teacher in a classroom. Then I came back around to that when our kids were at George Watts and I actually got my certification and then kind of butted heads up again with the classroom and finally figured out that tutoring was a better path for me. Jim Wise: I see. Was Duke how you got to Durham? Or did you have connections other than… Jennifer McGovern: Um hmm, Yeah, from Connecticut.

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Jim Wise: From Connecticut. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah. Jim Wise: Why Duke? Why Durham? Jennifer McGovern: You know I…the only way I can answer that question is maybe it was the voice of God, because I did not know anybody that went to Duke, I had one principal going which was I am getting out of New England for college. So I was the only one of the four kids in my family that, my younger sister eventually went to Carlton, but I was the only one that was getting the heck out of not Dodge, but all of New England. Um, and Duke was the place that I wanted to come. I’d studied the Civil War in my junior year in High School and I thought people in this country think differently in different parts, which I’ve certainly found to be true. Many commonalities, but also different perspectives. And I got down here and the first time I saw it snow, it snowed all afternoon and there was no snow on the ground. (laughs) And I figured out that the seasons change and the winters didn’t kill me and I thought this is just fine. (laughs) But Steve is from California, so I had to convince him to come back this way; cross country.

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Jim Wise; so this would have been in the 80s? Jennifer McGovern: I came in ’75 and I graduated in ’80. So I actually moved out to the Bay Area for a short time…like nine, nine months and then February of ’82, Steve and I both moved back here. And that’s when we both got involved in local politics. I do not remember knowing about People’s Alliance when I was at Duke. Nor was I part of the Crest Street work. I remember, making sandwiches for strikers at, maybe it was American Tobacco, at some point. Um, you know, so I was aware somewhat of Durham but not to the extent that some others got involved. And I was on the Chronicle staff. I mean, that’s kind of where the last handful of progressives at Duke at that time (laughs) were to be found. Jim Wise: Well, I had a long tradition of progressivism going back to… Jennifer McGovern: And it was a pretty conservative campus at that point in time.

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Jim Wise: What did you do at the Chronicle? We you a reporter? Jennifer McGovern: I was a reporter and eventually did some editing. Jim Wise: Any particular beat? Jennifer McGovern: No.

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Jim Wise: General assignment? Jennifer McGovern: Yep. Jim Wise: What took you to the Bay Area and what brought you back? Jennifer McGovern: Steve…and I knew, I mean I always knew that I wanted to come back here and I just, it took a while to convince him. But it was very interesting for him coming to Durham from the Bay Area, having done more, more international politics in the Bay Area, but being affiliated with the church out there you’d have to be very careful who you worked with. Here, as in the ultra left, and here there was only the CWP and that was after ’80 that was not, they weren’t doing active work because of the massacre. So he found it very interesting to be in a much smaller setting and have the sense, he did “right to know” work on the Armageddon Chemical Company. He was um, he and Michael Zucker, who he just went up to visit worked for Perg at that point and Michael was the one who figured out that they were technically in zoning violation which they just held on to until the right moment. But it was one of those, and you know eventually the Durham work got overtaken by the State and a weaker “right to know” but a statewide ordinance. But he could see very quickly that 2 or 3 or 4 people could make a big difference in local politics. We worked on Mickey Micheaux’s campaign. Um, you know just kind of getting involved and then I actually got more involved in the People’s Alliance as um, we were involved but then I was part of the leadership while I was pregnant with the girls. I knew that I wanted something that was going to get me out of the house and I was going to be home after our second one was born. So I, I was on the, I don’t remember what we called it then, um coordinating committee and then eventually became President and then we started fundraising for a staff position and the first 2 people we asked said no and I thought, I should just sign up for it (laughs) and I did. So that was when I became staff. But it was a very grant driven organization in the early ‘80s. The construction work in progress work, um, you know I don’t remember what the other, maybe some train work, we had grant money for. But the grant money was drying up. And so the staff time was going down. Steve was actually a very part time staff person for a year or two when he was at Central getting his certification. So it was a very bare bones staff situation, and we decided that we wanted to have more, so the goal was to raise $12,000 for a part time staffer and we actually went over that goal. But I, my, especially my years as staff, I felt like, for me it was taking the organization from a grant driven income to a membership income. Which gave us a tremendous amount of freedom. I mean basically, there was little bit of money coming into the Fund, which is the 501 c 3; we have three arms of People’s Alliance; the Fund is the 50 c 3, the Chapter, I think after I went off staff, they actually passed bylaws, there’d been a statewide organization and Durham was the only remaining active chapter, but the, certainly by the late ‘80s. I think Mark Hellnan (?) was actually involved in Charlotte and there was a Raleigh group, there may have been a Greensboro group.

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Jim Wise: What do you know about the origins of the People’s Alliance as a statewide group? I think most of us are now familiar in the 21^(st) Century of the PA as one of the big 3 political action groups in Durham. But I know it has, it has, it didn’t originate exactly… Jennifer McGovern: And it as called the People’s Alliance for a Cooperative Commonwealth (laughs), big ideas. Um, and I don’t know, I don’t know the history of how the different groups got going, but I think the intent was to have a progressive affect on North Carolina politics. Jim Wise: And Durham turned out to be the most fertile ground. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s true. And partly you know that work in the kind of early to mid ‘80s that turned it toward being a membership organization, that was significant I think because that we used um, we used the poll work to kind of pull people in as, because it was a one shot you know, one shot a couple of hours but then, but then they could coordinate a precinct, and then they could jump over with being active in the chapter activities. So we have the Pac and we have the Chapter and have the, we still have the 501 c 3. And they’re actually looking for a grant right now to try to do some statewide work after the opposition to the amendment, Kate said at the office people were calling and calling and calling because PA really jumped out there early, got signs printed up and I think um, had quite a spike in membership from that, just locally for People’s Alliance. So it’s kind of fun to think about it going the other direction.

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Jim Wise: So what were the big issues that were, when you got involved in the People’s Alliance. Jennifer McGovern: Let me say one other thing for me. I think for some people, PA was a way to say no to things, and while I think that’s very legitimate. I, I felt like there should always be a second layer of this is how we think, you know this is what we think the solutions should be. So I can give you an example of one of my favorite um memories, which is when the, Durham was getting ready to expand the um, waste water treatment. Was it both? I’m trying to remember. Both water treatment and waste water treatment? I just remember like something like 11. something MGD and it was not at all clear to us, it just felt like they pulled that number out the hat, so we made a counter proposal (laughs), it was 8 or 9 MGD and all of a sudden the staff started producing all this material, because in fact they, I mean I think that they had thought about it, but they hadn’t made a case to the Council for why it should be this and not something smaller or bigger or whatever. It was probably just what the, you know, the Chamber and the um, Builders Association had you know somehow that was the number that people had arrived at. And in fact in that, um on that vote, the Durham Committee went no on that expansion and PA went yes. It was one of those…at that period, one of the few times that we went different ways. But coalition work was one of the big themes and it was a time when Pete Allison was head of the Durham Committee. Eventually as time went on we got cut out of that. LaVonia Allison was not interested in coalescing with the People’s Alliance. Jim Wise: But originally there was close cooperation. Jennifer McGovern: Oh, there was a regular meet, we met at the Chicken Hut down on Fayetteville Street. And I have a very distinct memory of now, I should be able to tell you which election, probably ’87. I was President and Lee Richardson who’s deceased now was the Pac Chair and we were driving, going down that hill, getting off the Freeway heading toward Fayetteville Street to the Chicken Hut when we heard on, what was the DUR, it was the radio station that would carry the election results at that time, that we had swept the City election. And that was the first time, that we’d, you know, we, the Durham Committee and the People’s Alliance had endorsements in common and we, we were able to get our people in.

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Jim Wise: Now was that the year that Wib Gulley was re-elected? Jennifer McGovern: You know, I wish I could remember, um, and I don’t the library has my news, my set of newsletters from that time, um. That sounds about right. After the recall. Jim Wise: I think he was elected in ’85, the recall was in ’86. Jennifer McGovern: And then he was re-elected. (cross talk) that sounds right. And I think it was ’89 that I became that I became a staff person and stayed on for 8 years I think it was.

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Jim Wise: Well how were, it sounds like the relations between the PA and Committee were very good back in the 80s… Jennifer McGovern: For a long time. Yeah, and so we would get together, I don’t remember how often, but there were regular meetings and discussion about endorsements and issues and it was good. Jim Wise: Well what were the big issues? Jennifer McGovern: Well let’s see, education was huge because we went through the merger of the school systems during that time period and again PA put out a position paper, you know what, it was called, “The Good Durham School,” and it was or vision for what good schools would look like. So we were very supportive of the merger efforts.

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Jim Wise: Can you describe what that vision was? Jennifer McGovern: Um, that’s a good question. Um, diversity, accountability, you know, standards, commitment to best practices, but that changes, best practices change over time, but the sense of the system, actually looking to find what’s working. It’s kind of the opposite of what’s going on with the State Legislature right now. Let’s just say what we’re going to do and we don’t care what the, what research says, what science says. Let’s see, ah, equity, you know it was a very interesting situation that the city schools actually had a higher, I want to say per capita building so what would that be, what’s that called? Capital, funny, because I remember… Jim Wise: Capital (?) inaudible Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, they had actually had a higher per capita than the County system had had. And I remember when there was some kind of law suit. I can’t even tell you what the law suit was about now, but I remember telling the lawyers when they were deposing that you cannot say that the City…it’s not a classic, you know the City got shunted out of money but you can’t say that in Durham. The City schools actually had resources. Um, and there was, there was quite a movement within the African American community to send their children to the County schools because there was a perception that the education was more rigorous in the County schools and then, you know I think a lot of ambivalence about doing that, but many.

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Jim Wise: As I recall that was the consensus of opinion both white and black, that the County schools were better in those days. But you sent your children to George Watts, which is a City school. Jennifer McGovern: When it was about, at that time about 2/3rds of the kids were on free and reduced priced lunch. And that worked fine. I think you know as it edges on up and as it did, it ends up being a different situation. But then they end up, both of them ended up at DSA for middle school and high school. I mean we had the best of all worlds. They walked to elementary, they walked to middle school and high school. That’s just really sweet. (laughs) And I have to say, I mean having grown up in suburban white Connecticut I, I feel like they got a similar education to what I got in a much more diverse student setting. You know Watts was very economically diverse and I think they learned a tremendous amount by watching their peers and interacting. And then at DSA they both did track and cross country and that was where the interracial relationships really happened for them. But yeah, we got really lucky. Watershed was a huge issue because um, Trayburn. You know, we built this beautiful lake for Trayburn and they got to put sewer lines in. And I need to, I need to ask somebody now how much Trayburn is bringing in for tax revenue because that was. I mean that’s the whole argument with 751, saying you know we’re going to bring in tax revenue eventually and that was one of the arguments for Trayburn. I don’t, I don’t know. Trayburn might have actually pulled it off. I don’t know. But the industrial park and the Fall Lake Watershed and there was that time that the maps disappeared and the lines somehow changed. (laughs) That was Jack…what was his name? The County Manager, big African American guy. Jack…oh, I can’t remember his last name. So Watershed, education, housing was big. You know always a commitment to affordable housing. Economic development. I, you know, the new, the new, the then new Bulls Stadium was proposed as economic development and I know in one way of looking at economic development you can make that argument but it didn’t ring true to me and it wasn’t creating jobs, it was the hope that the promises about American Tobacco would actually happen. And I still look at American Tobacco and that whole, you know the necklace of restaurants in downtown and I go, “oh my goodness, it actually happened.” Because so often the public investment goes in and then the private doesn’t necessarily happen. One always hopes but we’ve been, I mean I think Goodmon really, when he promised, he meant it, and has followed through and eventually American Tobacco did have, but American Tobacco sat open for, you know just dormant for forever and there was asbestos and I know I just remember thinking is it, is it actually going to happen? Jim Wise: Well it certainly didn’t look very promising for a long time. Jennifer McGovern: No it didn’t and we, we actually called, People’s Alliance called in a structural engineer to look at the old Ballpark, because what they said was it’s crumbling. And, and I can’t remember now whether this was, I think this was a comment about actually George Watts when they were going to abandon George Watts and somebody said they had good time with re-enforced concrete. But it turns out it was the same thing with the old stadium, for sure we needed new bathrooms and a few other things, but the stadium itself as has been shown, was perfectly fine. It wasn’t crumbling. And that, so it’s just, and then they were going to use University, they were going to you know buy the land at University Ford, and we’re like that’s tax paying, tax generating land. Don’t take that out of the tax generation. So it’s just you know trying to make common sense arguments for you know for good approaches for government. And I think that we did have some influence on what happened. And I’m thrilled, even though I voted against the new stadium (laughs) actually I think that that um, what do you call it when it’s a special thing on the…not a resolution, a referendum. I think that actually went down and then the Council did it by certificates of participation.

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Jim Wise: That’s right it did. That’s the second time you mentioned a specific case of checking behind the city and it sounds like the PA has been very detail oriented and it’s not just ideology Jennifer McGovern: Exactly, it’s getting in there and saying what actually makes sense. And we, People’s Alliance played a big role in that one sense for affordable housing this time around. And um, you know just saying you can’t put it all in Rolling Hills and then abandon all the groups that have been…we have some amazing, the Housing for New Hope, Genesis Home, and the Urban Ministries are phenomenal non-profits. I just think they are amazing. And um, oh another memory I had, this was the water, related to the Watershed one. Sanford and Handler were, they did Bright Leaf and I don’t think they asked for much money to do Bright Leaf. But the Trayburn thing kind of really got under PA’s skin. As a joke we put out a petition to extend the exemptions because they kept asking for exemptions and people at the meeting, it was a public hearing and like Paul Luebke put something down there and Willie Lovett put something down there and it was very funny and Paul Lumbeck read it out to the Council and everybody got a good laugh. But it was just, you know trying to use humor to show that this is ridiculous. You know, they’re just pushing the envelope and you don’t have to keep saying yes (laughs). Let’s see housing. Bicycle paths, you know we haven’t, probably haven’t been the main group on that, but it’s something you know, public transportation, public transportation there was a, a way back in the early 80s there was a citizen’s roundtable for on the buses, the bus system on Durham. So that was, public transit was definitely work that PA did way back and kind of consistently encouraged money for the system and adding to the system and support for the Triangle Transit. Jim Wise: Was that the period when the City was taking over the bus system from Duke Power? Jennifer McGovern: I think that’s probably right. Yeah. But I don’t remember. It seems like there were two distinct transition times and I don’t remember what the second one was.

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Jim Wise: Housing certainly, education those were issues in the 80s. They’re still issues in Durham, but do you see that the issues may be the same but have the approaches to them, or the attitudes about them improved? Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, I think that…one of the things I feel most proud about in Durham is that we’ve…there’s such a commitment to education that we’re…the Commission was able to raise taxes to help us, a quarter cent. You know in so many places in the country, I mean they flat out don’t have the resources and it would, they, they couldn’t do that, but we’ve, People’s Alliance and others, many other groups have helped build the case for public education in Durham. And it’s a very, um, very much a time of transition in education with the Charters. You know, I don’t know what’s going to end up happening. But the PA education committee is still going strong, occasionally goes down to the school board and pushes for…you know some of its been trying to push the Charters to actually be work with lower income kids and the issue being transportation usually and the free lunch program. You’re not providing those things you don’t have everybody there. Jim Wise: It sounds like you’re still very much involved with the People’s Alliance. Jennifer McGovern: I’m not. I’m on the Fund board and I kind of keep a finger in the People’s Alliance but I wouldn’t say I’m um, an active member right now. I mean I kind of keep in touch and I went to the first Pac endorsement meeting for that I’d been to in several years and there were like 100 people there. I mean that’s amazing. In terms of a local organization, you know a City of a quarter of a million having 100 people at a meeting to make endorsements. That’s amazing. That’s a lot of citizen activism and participation in sense that it makes a difference.

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Jim Wise: Well that’s something that characterizes Durham now I believe; the citizen participation. A lot of interest, perhaps not in terms of the percentage of citizens that are active in local issues but in the, the effect that they have and the level of interest of those who are. It seems quite unusual Jennifer McGovern: Right and I think the Durham Voter’s Alliance, the People’s Alliance, the Durham Committee, you know all those years in the 80s when were kind of trying to crack open local government, the County Commission used to meet during the day. You know all those things that, that things that enable people to participate and have a voice. Um, I feel so proud of all the energy that’s in…I felt like in Raleigh the restaurants dictated their food truck policy. In Durham it’s like much more entrepreneurial and then there’s Chapel Hill, who didn’t get on application from their food trucks (laughing) you know it’s like $800 for a permit? Are you kidding me? So we still get both newspapers. For a while we just got the N&O and we couldn’t stand not, I mean as little reporting as the Herald Sun does, it’s still has things in there that aren’t in the N&O. It’s important to keep up. But there, I find there are a lot of um, there’s a lot of cross pollination going on in Durham. Here’s my favorite example. I picked up the newspaper and Terry Allebaugh is teaching harmonica at a Mallor May (?) Chambers players summer camp in a low income community in East Durham. You know, that’s the kind of cross pollination that goes on. And I think that you know PA and the Durham Committee have advocated very strongly for lower income people I think that we’re a sanctuary city for Latinos and that’s um, again, many groups played a role in that, but People’s Alliance has a part in that and it’s, it’s a profound thing. We have a friend who lives in Winston Salem and people were just getting rounded up and put into the holding detention centers. That’s not, that’s not the atmosphere in Durham. Which is just, it’s only people’s leadership and hard work that make that happen. And you can see in Parks and Rec there’s outreach to the Latino community, all the African American…the Bimbe Festival and the Blues Festival and those things continue to go on and they have quite a program now with um, special kids, Special Olympics, you know which I think is fabulous. I think that’s a great use of tax dollars. So there’s a commitment to listening to the City. And I have to say. I think Bonfield is a fabulous City Manager. We’ve kind of had our ups and downs with…you know we, we used to come up against Orville Powell early. And you know Sandy Igor told me that she still is in touch with him. He still comes through sometimes. He teaches a class somewhere down east or something and… : yeah, but he was a, I mean we didn’t agree with him a lot of the time, but he was a straight up, you know accountability kind of City Manager. And then we kind of had a string of ones that didn’t work out so well. But the interesting thing to me is I have never felt, and I don’t, I never have heard people in general talking about a lack of service you know, “they didn’t pick up my garbage,” or they didn’t you know which happened in Raleigh and you know I don’t have a sense that…we kind of fell down on the road paving but that was actually under I kind of peg that on Nick Tenneson’s administration, maybe unfairly but they weren’t willing to bite the bullet and say that we just, we got to raise some taxes here, so this infrastructure stuff. Which we eventually did, which was the right thing to do. Um, how did I start out on that one…how did I get onto the paving stuff. Jim Wise: Well you were talking about the, you had no sense that that… Jennifer McGovern: Oh right, the basic services, you know. The you know, schools were ok, public library system, trash pick up you know, water service those things, you know, from a consumer level here, you know, never stopped functioning, and that’s you know, that’s a strength, that’s not a small thing in a city.

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Jim Wise: Not it’s certainly not. Jennifer McGovern: Steve and I went up to New York um in June and I hadn’t been probably like 25 years. It’s a clean city; it’s a welcoming city, I know, it’s like, it was quite a different experience. And they went through that ‘80s of the Bronx is burning and crime was going up and they’ve, they’ve turned a corner back around. Which you can do but you have to tackle…that’s that’s, I guess that’s one of our big things in the ‘80s was, if you don’t put the dirty laundry in the washing machine and hang it out, you can’t solve the problems. So it was part of what we were about was let’s get them all out there because we won’t be solving them unless they’re actually all together, working on them. Jim Wise: So is that the idea behind cracking open local government as you put it? Jennifer McGovern: Yeah.

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Jim Wise: That is a great turn of phrase. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, and not sweeping the problems under the carpet because we don’t, you know we don’t really want to acknowledge. Jim Wise: So is that a difficult thing to do. To crack open local government? Jennifer McGovern: At times…

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Jim Wise: Coming into it in the 1980s? Jennifer McGovern: At times it was. I think, I think by the mid to late ‘80s, it was getting…well, by that time, you know, Wib had been elected and we had more success getting people onto the Council and it was…the first precinct meeting that Steve and I went to, we were renting over in, I think its precinct 4, E.K. Powe, or maybe that’s Math and Science, anyhow, we went to E.K. Powe and the, the white hairs, or the old guard, locked the doors at, promptly at what was it 7 as more people were coming up the path, and it was a one vote meeting where it was going, I don’t know what it was, you know like 29 to 28 and that’s, you know that was early, that’s you know, that when we were making that turn from Durham being kind of an older southern city, kind of token African American representation to it being, you know, cracked open, I guess it the best way to say it. There were you know, especially in the “Right to know” work, and People’s Alliance was part of that in the early ‘80s, there was definitely some uncomfortable moments of trying to force things to happen. But yet you just have to keep at it. I went to the lunch today for the Democracy North Carolina interns and they celebrate their summer work and I asked the young fellow next to me, I said, “what was the most surprising thing from the Summer?” and he said, that how approachable elected officials were. And I thought you know, it’s just in Durham is small enough you better be able to talk to both people on both sides because you’re going to see them around. And you can’t just pursue this one ideological line and not be able to carry on a conversation about their kids or their…Matt Yarborough, and we were often on opposite sides, sent a rose when our older daughter was born because Steve missed a meeting at…you know it’s just that kind of you know, I mean we were at Kerr Methodist and they, the David Arvind wanted to run for City Council and they were none of it, they had no use for a majority black City Council when that happened. And yet, you know they made baby blankets for our kid and took care of them in the nursery. It was a great lesson in we’re all here together and we got to figure out how to get along and make enough great things happen. I worry a lot, I think a lot about how can Durham be as sustainable as possible. I worry about our young people them finding secure enough employment. Our younger one is about to start teaching at Northern. She just finished the MAT program at Duke, so we are excited about that. Jim Wise: Congratulations Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, and they, she and her Chilean husband live just down the street, so that’s even better. Yes, except we’ve been on three weeks of chicken duty, so I’m about ready for them to come home. I remember that petition, signing that petition for people to be able to have chickens within the city limits, probably I don’t know five years ago, six years ago, something like that. And they have, they have five chickens. Yeah.

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Jim Wise: Chickens healthy and no raccoons breaking in? Jennifer McGovern: They had a possum coming, not to eat the chickens but to eat the chicken food, so they finally started putting the chicken food up in the coop. When they put the chickens up, they put the chicken food up and then they caught the possum in their squirrel trap. (laughs) But that’s a, you know, that’s a good example of you can circulate petitions and you can get change. By golly there are a lot of chickens around the City of Durham now. And whoever gave chicken shit a bad name; I don’t know what they were thinking because that stuff is the most amazing fertilizer I have ever seen. It’s incredible. Yeah, it’s amazing. So they’ve built race beds. They’re renting the house right down on the corner, so you can’t sleep on the bedroom that’s on the Gregson Street side, but it’s ended up being really great for them. Jim Wise: You were involved in People’s Alliance, you got involved in local politics in the early ‘80s, so what led you to be interested in becoming the Executive Director by ’89? Jennifer McGovern: I think by then, I had been involved and was beginning to think about, our younger one was three, so I was beginning to think about work and Steve was on starter teacher pay, which I remember very clearly was $17,000 a year, back then. I’m glad to say our daughter’s not starting at, she’s starting actually close to twice that, which is really wonderful. But I um, I think I watched my father be engaged civically and just um, felt a calling to try to make the community better.

00:40:57.710 - 00:41:24.210

Jim Wise: So you grew up with roll models for being, for participatory democracy then? Jennifer McGovern: Right, yeah, and for, and for putting, you know, putting whatever muscle power, you can, you know, whatever muscle power I could bring, you know it’s my responsibility to put that toward making things better. Jim Wise: Where in Connecticut did you grow up? Jennifer McGovern: I grew up in Ridgeville which is right on the New York border in that elbow in that little part of Connecticut that comes down. So it is the middle of Fairfield County. It is very upper class um, very white. And I, you know, I tried to figure out why don’t more black people live here and it took me a long time to kind of figure it out, because the line up there is “anyone can live here, we’re not racist,” and so I just had to be other places and go back, and go back and forth and figure out yes there is racism up in Connecticut (laughs).

00:41:57.810 - 00:44:17.680

Jim Wise: So how did you feel coming from Connecticut then to Duke. Was Duke what you expected? Jennifer McGovern: I think yes, but I think that academically I was frustrated but I don’t know that I would have, that that would have not been the case anywhere. I mean unless I’d been somewhere where they said just take what you’re interested in, just go learn. That would have been fine with me. Um, but I got involved through the Chapel in the National Student YWCA which got me to the World Student Christian Federation, which is how I met Steve. So we had at that point, we, you know very progressive and Christian, so we had those two things in common at that already. And, and the student YWCA was, I learned so much between student YWCA and the World Student Christian Federation about working multi-racially. You know, it’s…I’m sure there are people who manage to work multi-racially without sort of going through a crucible experience but I think that for most of us, given the history of race in this country you just, you just have to get shaken up. And I don’t care who you are, or where you’re coming from, you have to figure out, you know, that you can work with other people and how to work with people who are different than you or are coming from different directions. And, and it’s hard learning it. (laughs) It’s very hard learning, but I think to get to the point where for me, it was getting to a point where I could find…see people for who they were and learn from them, and not have blinders or preconceptions, not that we don’t all struggle with those all our lives, but kind of major um, revelations about how to work together. Jim Wise: What were you working on with the Y, that formed this crucible experience for you? Jennifer McGovern: It was, we were trying to get some summer programs going, you know restart some summer programs, you know and watching the politics between Native American women and African American women and I think those were the two major and then White women. Talking to white women who were part of the YWCA during the late ‘60s when it was um, the black power movement and kind of black self sufficiency and how hurt they felt at being shut out of the partnerships that they had built through doing Civil Rights work together. You know I mean, just trying to do committee work and um, keep the National organization going. And the YW is a dying organization kind of like, I mean I can say something like the SCLC. I think it served an incredible purpose but there aren’t very many left anymore and I don’t, I don’t know whether the student Y even exists but it was all female, you know it was all female and um students from all over the country.

00:45:29.960 - 00:46:11.740

Jim Wise: This was also at the beginning of the feminist or Women’s Lib as it was called. Jennifer McGovern: Right, that was kind of getting going in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, yeah. Yeah, so there was a lot going on. But it was that, that just learning how to, listening to the stories and learning how to find things to work together on. Jim Wise: Has religion always been an important part of your life? Sounds like spirituality Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, yeah, that’s fair to say. And, and we were not, when we were in the Bay Area, we weren’t part of a local church, but basically ever since we’ve been back here we were at Kerr and we’ve been at Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill. We were visiting our older daughter and her husband in San Antonio and they, they’re going to, they’re, what would I say…Molly for several years was part of, we called the Progressive Evangelical Urban Ministry, but that kind of living with the poor, but it’s very evangelical. And Waycross Chapel where we went to church this past Easter, they had a celebration and concerns, you know people could have a chance to say please pray for blah blah blah and it just kind of, just, just like this to me, that you know, where’s the concern about the not there, but the amendment and the social concerns were just completely lacking from their purvey. And I thought, you know maybe Molly and Levi will play a role there in broadening getting them involved in Habitat, or maybe they are involved in Habitat already, but just trying to broaden out their perspective.

00:47:27.000 - 00:48:25.920

Jim Wise: Looks like there’s a Ministry to be carried out. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah. But we left Kerr for two reasons. One was there were so few kids and we had both grown up in youth groups and felt that that was an important part of kids having adults that they could talk to about whatever was going on for them and the other thing was just more outward, you know, Kerr people would do anything for anybody in that church but there wasn’t a big sense of being involved in the broader community. And the Rec is at many different levels and internationally and nationally involved in things. So that was, it ended up being a really good fit and the kids actually still keep up with quite a few of the people that were in the youth group and the leaders of the youth group. Jim Wise: Well that’s nice that they’ve had these continuing relationships into adulthood. Jennifer McGovern: And they had the advantage of, as I did, I mean I moved when I was six to Ridgefield and then stayed in the same place. Katie lived her whole life in this house and Molly just lived over on Wilkerson for a couple of years, so you know, they had the advantage of being in a community over time, which is huge. Yeah.

00:48:45.720 - 00:49:10.200

Jim Wise: I would agree with that. You became PA Executive Director in ’89 and stayed until ’97. Jennifer McGovern: We didn’t call it Ed, what did we call it? Probably staff person. (laughs) Jim Wise: Most of the references I see you quoted as spokesperson. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, that would fit, right, kind of playing down the leadership title. And I can’t remember, we called the coordinating committee I think, by, by the late 80s, but I don’t, I think eventually maybe the President got, I can’t remember what they called whoever the current…David Harris is the current, maybe he’s the President, I don’t know. But that ideological thing. (laughs) So it was ’89 when I came on as a paid staff person.

00:49:41.280 - 00:50:04.160

Jim Wise: You were changing it from grant driven to membership driven… Jennifer McGovern: So trying to build up the membership. Doing tables at Centerfest, um, anytime that we did issue work, trying to invite people to join. Jim Wise: And I take it that that was a success? Jennifer McGovern: Uh hm. Yeah, yeah. And then after I left um, as is not unusual when you have a long time staff person that it kind of staff changed several times and I know that, I think the third person after me was not, didn’t do the organizational maintenance, you know the membership. I mean when you have a membership organization you have to make sure the renewals get mailed out to people and that they understand there is the Fund, and the Pac and the Chapter and just kind of keep communication with people. And I think that, I think PA actually came, came close to dwindling away. Um, and David Alston went on as staff person and I think, if I remember correctly, he was one of the two we offered the job to back in the mid 80s, the late 80s, and he had other things going on. But he had helped start NKOSH. Um, anyhow, he got in there, just with a steady hand and got things back on a sure footing and then Kate Fellman, who’s the staff person now, she’s great. But it is interesting what it takes, cause it’s not the politics don’t keep the organization going. It takes the, you know, the bread and butter is what you know, communicating with the membership and getting those membership renewals back in that actually keep a local group strong.

00:51:30.000 - 00:52:33.440

Jim Wise: I should think that it’s also important just for the social aspect of it. Getting opportunities for people to get together and form and maintain friendships. Jennifer McGovern: Right and ways to recruit new people in. I mean I think it was a real lesson for the anti-amendment folks to you know, especially gay and lesbian folks to see the value in a local organization able to print the yard signs quickly and distribute them and nobody at that point, there was a general committee but they weren’t, it was a solid two months before those signs started coming out. You know, so they could see the advantage of having a progressive local organization in place. And I think that’s what people around the State were able to see and are…you know there’s some interest in trying to um, help other groups get going. Jim Wise: Well there is the saying all politics is local. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, yeah, and ironically enough I went through enough up down cycles in the National political scene…there was…when the national political scene went conservative there was always a fall off in the local involvement and I just felt like saying to people, “no, you need to turn your attention to local now, because you can actually get something done. Don’t feel discouraged. Right, turn your attention to the local because you can get things done at the local level. Just a few of you, you try and do something, you can get something done.” But there was always a fall off in participation, especially in PAC stuff and the committees would have a harder time getting people going. But it’s, it’s very true that PA can only do what the members are willing to do. You know there’s not enough staff time to do all the research that goes into, you know a Charter School position or the housing stuff. It takes people with time to dig in and with a half time staff person and Kate might even be less than that, you just, you have to really be focused on what the staff time is going toward.

00:53:43.320 - 00:55:25.340

Jim Wise; Well it’s a pretty remarkable thing and it says a lot about Durham that there are so many people willing to put in that much of their time. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, right. Well it was interesting. David Dodson with MDC said one time…I’m a founding member of the Board of Achievement Academy, this GED to Post Secondary and he said Durham’s response to some huge problems is well, the non-profit’s gonna work on that. I mean for example, we don’t have a teen shelter and we should, Some, I’m not sure what the percent would be, but, but by definition some, some percentage of our students are homeless. They don’t know where they are going to sleep that night. They’re couch surfing. They don’t consider themselves homeless but they are. They don’t have an adult that says, “This is your bed, here’s your food. We keep the kitchen stocked.” We provide wrap around services because that’s the only way it will work for those kids. But our graduation rate is actually better than DPS overall, with the hardest kids. I mean it’s a long process for many of them, but with the wrap around services available they can do it. And without them it just doesn’t work. And we thought, we thought the post secondary was going to be easier because we could get them in for GED and then they would be familiar with the Achievement Academy and it’s like all the things that derailed them from education in the first place, they don’t go away. Jim Wise: What sort of things? Jennifer McGovern: Chaos at home. You know, the electricity’s off or there moving in with another family member cause the rent didn’t get paid. Job, you know jobs changing, um, mental health, a lot of mental health issues. And if you don’t deal with those things, you know need for childcare, need for transportation. We buy bus passes. We try to help our students find childcare.

00:55:52.680 - 00:56:11.060

Jim Wise: You were one of the founders of Achievement Academy? You were by that time teaching or tutoring? Jennifer McGovern: Yeah. I was tutoring. I had my own tutoring business. Jim Wise: So how did you get started with Achievement Academy? Jennifer McGovern: You know, I think Sandy Washington called me up and said, you know, we’re starting this group and I want for you to be involved. And I was doing, I can’t remember, I was doing something else at the time and I remember saying I can be on the board at the beginning, but I can’t take a leadership position until, and I don’t remember exactly when that was. But it was February of, this coming February will be 8 years, because I’m on my last terms and then by the bylaws I’ll rotate off. But it’s always a struggle to get enough money in. That’s the hardest part about it. And then the work is just…I mean my hat is off to people that, that…I care a lot about students, but I couldn’t be in there everyday doing. It’s too much noise and too much dysfunction. It’s like, but I can go, I mean I think when eventually when I retire from tutoring, I don’t know when that will be, but I can see I would go tutor and it’s quite a fete to set up a safe place; safe for the students, safe for the volunteers and safe for the staff people. Every once in a while we have an incident but (inaudible).

00:57:22.780 - 00:58:29.720

Jim Wise: This was a need that you, Sandy Washington, yourself and others… Jennifer McGovern: She was tired. She’d been teaching GED and she tired of seeing her former students working fast food, which is not a living wage. And that’s the goal is, they get enough education that they can get a living wage. That was a…PA was involved in the living wage work. That was probably early, no mid, 90s maybe, mid to late 90s. But our son in law for several months was a patient transporter at Duke Hospital and he was making something like $12 an hour. That’s a living wage. And that you know, we said to him, you’re making that much money doing patient transport because people worked really hard to push Duke to pay a living wage to people. And what a difference that makes. Jim Wise: Yes, over minimum wage. And what led you to leave People’s Alliance in ’97… Jennifer McGovern: I decided to get certified to teach so I went to Central. Yeah, so it was, it was feeling like I was ready to move on.

00:58:36.420 - 00:59:55.500

Jim Wise: Had you been thinking that that was going to be in your future all along? Jennifer McGovern: No, it was volunteering at George Watts and I thought, I can do this and then when I finished and I was at Holt, I just came back around to that. I don’t, I don’t like the chemistry in a classroom. I did end up teaching reading at Carrington for five years along the path in the early 2000s and enjoyed that. It was kind of, I had to kinda grow into it. It, I mean our younger daughter, who’s going to be teaching at Northern, she and her father they get the classroom stuff. I had to really work my way into it. And if you had ever told me how much you have to ignore to be a good teacher, I would have said “no.” But if you stop for every time a kid is doing something he’s not supposed to be doing in a classroom you’re not going to teach at all. You know, now between cell phones and stuff you know Middle School, oh my goodness, you know they’re…you just have to, you know move forward and be really picky about when you stop and deal with something. So I do better one on one or small group. Jim Wise: When you were in the classroom, you were in middle school? Jennifer McGovern: Elementary, that’s what I trained in, which has turned out to be really good training for tutoring. So I can teach a child to read. I can teach elementary math. But I’ve ended up…I have some elementary students. I have a couple of middle school students and then I end up with quite a few high school…a lot of them from DSA because they can just walk over here. But I got my, kind of by accident, to get renewal credits for my teaching credential, I started taking Spanish at Durham Tech. And the first year, my first semester, no second semester, my professor mentioned a community Spanish facility certificate and I ended up going all way with that. Little did I know we would end up with a Spanish speaking son in law and when he came up a year and a half ago, he had almost no English, so it was really good that Steve and I both were able to communicate with him. So let’s see, how did I get on to that? So I can tutor in ah, you know from the beginnings of things and I can do through Algebra 2. I draw the line at Pre-Cal. I can do SAT and ACT so it’s been a good…you know sometimes I’ll pick up students for a couple of months for SAT, you know and then they take the test and there done. Other kids I’ve had…I’ve had one student since she’s been in second grade and she’s going in to tenth grade, now. So I’ve had some students for quite a while.

01:01:21.460 - 01:02:31.800

Jim Wise: You’ve got a very wide spectrum of expertise. Jennifer McGovern: I know, I know, which I love. I know that’s unusual. And I say to parents, I say I can do study skills with your student and I will if I, you know, if I come across that and that’s unusual in tutoring. And even for SAT and ACT a lot of times you get someone who can only do the Math or can only do the reading, so it’s a big advantage. And I laugh because Steve does Journalism and Calculus, you know and I, when I took the SAT I think my scores were like 10 points different and that’s more unusual than having on be…you know usually your better in Math and worse in the Reading stuff or the grammar stuff or the opposite. But we’re both kind of enjoy writing and we’re both readers. I find math very relaxing. It’s like I enjoy balancing a check book (laughs). It’s a closed system. I like tutoring math, but I tutor a lot of different things. Jim Wise: So how many pupils do you have? Jennifer McGovern: I think last spring I had 18 hours of tutoring scheduled. Now that, to get to that, that many and not be tutoring on the weekends or evenings, I had some before school hours and some during…you know just like I have a couple of students at Camelot that I can do during the school day. So, you know, and that’s probably more like a, you know it sounds like 18 hours but its probably more like 24, 25 by the time I get back and forth and do planning and do parent contact. But yeah, I like the…and that was the fun thing to me to me about People’s Alliance is that it was a lot of different skills. There was the office set of skills. There was the organizing set of skills to try to pull more people in. I learned public speaking when I was with People’s Alliance. You know I’d done very little of it, but when I started and by the time I finished I could just get up there and say what I needed to say. You know, and I didn’t get all nervous and so that was a growth for me through that.

01:03:36.420 - 01:03:58.880

Jim Wise: Well, that is a very useful skill to have to be able to speak in public and not be, not get stage fright. Jennifer McGovern: Yes, it took a while. (laughs) Jim Wise: So it sounds like you are very happy with the work you are doing. Jennifer McGovern: I thought about trying to go into interpretation when I got the certificate and I realized that I still really enjoy the tutoring. And I do, I have one student, he’s my only student that I do on a volunteer basis and that was through a connection that I tutored for a while at El Centro. And his mother prefers to speak in Spanish, doesn’t have that much English, so that’s been helpful.

01:04:23.800 - 01:04:58.880

Jim Wise: Another organization I see you are involved with, the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South. Jennifer McGovern: Yes, I do the administrative work for them. So that’s 6 hours a week and I say that’s a good balance to tutoring because I go in and make deposits and maintain a data base and kind of do admin stuff and whereas the tutoring, I’m always thinking about it and trying to figure out what to do with so and so. What resource to try to track down. Jim Wise: What is the Resource Center all about? Jennifer McGovern: Does programs mainly with women, creativity, spirituality, feminism, um, writing has been a big emphasis in the last few years. So workshops, retreats, and they’ve published a few books and they have a couple of more coming out, out of some of the writing work.

01:05:23.780 - 01:06:11.020

Jim Wise: So what drew you to that? Jennifer McGovern: Well, our younger daughter actually did an internship there and I said to Janet Stokes, the Ed, I said, “you know, you should be able to find someone for paid work because I would have killed for part time work when my, the kids were even, you know, before I started back with People’s Alliance.” And she was like, “Well if you know of anybody let me know. And I said, “You know I would think about it. You know if you don’t find somebody else.” And sure enough, she came back and said, “You’re on.” So it’s good. And it gives my week a little bit more structure then it otherwise would have. Jim Wise: Well what do you do in your spare time when you’re not tutoring… Jennifer McGovern: A little bit of gardening. Steve’s a bigger gardener, but a little bit of gardening. Um, I enjoy ah, making prints. I’ll show you one. (walks away from the microphone) (comes back)…when you buy fish or meat and make a square out of it. The girls taught me this and draw, you draw on it with a pencil and then you deepen the lines and then you can print with a printing ink. But I really, I really enjoy that, and I like writing notes to people. I like to cook. I love to read. I am very thankful that we have such a great library. And I found that when I was at Central, when I was, you know a new textbook saying, you know these are great books for teaching thus and such in elementary. I mean the Durham Public Library would have a good number of them. I felt really fortunate to have access to the latest and then I think they do a great job of just spending what money they have wisely on books. But I think it’s great that you can get a best seller. That you can get on the hold list and depending on how long the hold list is, you get a notice saying, “It’s here, waiting for you.” (laughs) I really enjoy, I enjoy walking. Walk at the golf course or around East Campus, and that’s one of the…We bought in this neighborhood way back when because we wanted to be able to walk and little did we know, I mean now we walk to the Carolina. We can always walk to Wellspring, um, you know back when the Food Coop was over on Chapel Hill Street. That wasn’t that far. But we can walk so many places from here. It’s amazing.

01:08:10.440 - 01:08:36.160

Jim Wise: When did you move into Trinity? Jennifer McGovern: 1986, we lived across the street in the Burch Ave for, the Burch Ave/Wilkerson neighborhood for a couple of years, maybe three years. Let’s see, probably ’83-’86 then moved across the railroad tracks over to here. Jim Wise: Well you moved into one of the hot bed neighborhood for activists. Jennifer McGovern: Yeah, for activism and it was just beginning to, and it sort of started to slide and then they got the zoning to stop the houses being carved up into apartments. And you know it started to come back. It is amazing to me in this day and age that we live in a house that has appreciated significantly in value because that’s not the typical real estate experience these days. But it’s so nice to be able to walk around. The kids spent so many hours up at the Park and East Campus was our second park and over here was our third park. Yeah, it was great.

01:09:13.300 - 01:09:25.860

Jim Wise: So how do you feel about Durham as a place to live? You’ve been here for a great while now. Jennifer McGovern: It’s a great place to live. Jim Wise: Not hankering to move to Texas then. Jennifer McGovern: No, I have no desire to move. I used to say carry me out of this house, and then with two sets of older parents who are determined not to move out of their houses ever, I don’t say that anymore. (laughs) We’ll sign up for somewhere soon.

01:09:41.240 - 01:11:17.440

Jim Wise: What does Durham have, or what is it about Durham that has created such a level of resident activism, resident interest and participation in civil life. Jennifer McGovern: I think it’s a value for valuing diversity. And that was part of cracking open the local government, was everybody’s here and we’re not going to sweep the problems under the rug. So whatever needs to bubble up can bubble up and we can look at it and think about it and figure out what we want to do about it. And so I think that energy, that kind of can do and those things, it’s not by accident, it’s by leadership that those people’s work over time that makes things actually happen. (preceding has sound issues) When Wib Gulley was Mayor, he was, he kept saying, Durham is going to be a City of the Arts. And I didn’t see any particular consensus on that but I think that Downtown Durham Inc picked up on that and by golly, I’m not quite sure exactly how but you know clearly that’s…The huge success of the DPAC. Again, you know we had no reason to believe it would be that successful and it’s kind of, it’s amazing. Jim Wise: I don’t believe anybody did except those who were really driving the project Jennifer McGovern: And then that whole necklace of restaurants around downtown. That supports that, you know that’s huge for the local economy. And Southpoint, I have to say, I was not a fan of Southpoint but I have to acknowledge that I think Southpoint really, the tax revenue from that carried the City through the leanest times where we didn’t completely lose out and kind of bomb out and have to fight back from a lot further down.

01:11:50.030 - 01:13:50.090

Jim Wise: How is Durham changing? We talked about how it’s changed with local government getting cracked open. What are the dynamics you see active here now? Jennifer McGovern: I think in terms of education, charter schools are a big change and I’m not…I think it kind of clouds the future for public education in Durham. It will be interesting to see how…I think there is a commitment to public education but I think it’s going to be harder and harder as people make different choices about where they’re putting their kids. Um, you know, I think we still have more work to do on bicycle access, you know that’s safe bicycling around. But I see a lot more people bicycling. Um, we just discovered the Bike Coop through our daughter and son in law. I took a couple of my students over. One, one who would kind of periodically get into trouble. He tells me this year is different. 8^(th) grade, they don’t let you out if you don’t pass. But that was, you know that was last year. I’m not going to do that stuff. Anyhow, let’s see. What other ways has Durham. I think it is a very hip place for young people to live. Which gives it a lot of energy and you know, again gives me concern about how they’re going to find enough security and work to have health insurance and you know whatever else they need to raise families. You know, I see it being a good environment for small businesses. I don’t know if small business owners would say the same thing. But it seems like people do start up businesses and make a go of it. Jim Wise: Well it sounds like you feel very positive about Durham? Jennifer McGovern: I do. Yeah.

01:13:51.130 - 01:14:20.630

Jim Wise: Have you always felt that way, at least since coming back in ’82 and involving yourself? Jennifer McGovern: I think, you know sometimes more critical than others, but there’s certainly more to happy about now. (laughs) There’s a lot to be happy about. Jim Wise: Well, anything else you’d like to talk about for posterity? Jennifer McGovern: I just looked over my notes and didn’t see anything there that I didn’t cover.

01:14:21.350 - 01:14:32.270

Jim Wise: Well, I certainly appreciate your time this afternoon. It’s a pleasure. Jennifer McGovern: When you called up, I didn’t picture who was going to be doing the interview that Lynn had talked about. I was like of course, Jim Wise. End of interview.