Interview with Judith Hill
In this interview conducted on November 16th, 2023, Judith Hill, the Executive Director of North Omaha Collective relates her experience with lead in the context of her involvement with community building work. The North Omaha Collective seeks to improve African American children's and families' quality of life both within and outside of the North Omaha community.
"There was a time when [lead] was a big conversation in our community. It came and went." Judith Hill's perspective on lead is informed by her decades long involvement in nonprofit work, from Charles Drew to her current work as Executive Director of the North Omaha Collective. Hill is familiar with the issue, in part, because her own home was remediated. Her remediation experience was not negative, but the underlying approach was less-than-impactful. "Free grass and a vaccuum cleaner" is not transformation change in North Omaha. This pattern, of problems emerging, followed by a brief (and often belated) period of intervention, followed by forgetting characterizes the experience of lead, and many other issue in North Omaha.
Hill perspective on lead and injustices more broadly is informed by observing this pattern repeatedly. This has profoundly impacted the North Omaha community and it has, in turn, informed her ongoing work with the North Omaha Collective. Rather than relying on programs and services that provide temporary assistance, she advocates "healing-centered engagement", particularly within youth-serving organizations and community groups.This involves long-term relationship building, greater emphasis on reflection, and possibility- (as opposed to problem- ) oriented thinking. This can be accomplishment with small, but meaningful "pivots" in organizational relationships with communities. The goal is to move from "transactional to transformational" relationships.
Hill's critique of remediation is grounded in the transactional, and thus ultimately impermanent, nature of the process. "Did you solve the lead problem," she asks, referring to past efforts? Or did we just "move on"? Her critique isn't limited to state of nonprofit activities either. Research and scholarship on social problems often mirrors or perpetuates these problematic patterns of intense focus and interest, followed by disengagement. She challenges researchers, including us, to consider how community education and scholarly engagement can provide a sense of hope. Research "has to have a life and an intent and a purpose that goes beyond the class project."
Hill's critiques serve her larger ambition to redirect efforts to identify possibilities for improved community relationships and outcomes. "What would it take to completely remediate this part of the city?" "Is it possible for Omaha to become an international example of a community that completely removed lead?" Simply posing this question is a necessary first step, but it can't be the end of the conversation. She argues that future research should pivot to focus on this type of "complete remediation."
Hill's advocacy is a powerful reminder that lead mirrors, and is often a proxy for, a wide variety of social problems. Our conversation ranged from COVID, to STIs, to housing availability, and food deserts. These problems are not limited to the present, and (as Brenda Council also noted) they are linked to industrial pollution, highway building, and enforced segregation. The lead problem is also open to the type of "mirror work" Hill advocates for researchers, state officials, and activists. "Omaha, Nebraska is only as strong as its weakest community", she argued, which should serve as motivation for us to engage in hard conversations to catalyze meaningful and lasting change.