2010 – the year we make contact

Wacker Chemie’s US CEO joins line-up of Key Panelists for Cleveland Diversity Forum

2010 will indeed be the year we make contact. “We” being the communities of Southeast Tennessee and especially the people in the Ocoee region. One of the key contacts to be made here is with one of the biggest future employers of the Ocoee region, Germany-based Wacker Chemie AG.

Today I am excited to announce that Wacker’s North American President & CEO, Dr. Ingomar Kovar, will be joining us as a panelist at the Building Community from Diversity Forum on January 22nd in Cleveland, TN.

Dr. Kovar will be part of a group of leaders from our area compiled by the Ocoee Region Multicultural Services (ORMS) and its operative arm, The Mosaic Center.

From the press release:

ORMS and the Mosaic Center are partnering with the Humanities Tennessee Council to host this free public forum and dialogue with the people of the Ocoee region of Tennessee. It will be held Friday, Jan. 22, 2010, at Cleveland State Community College from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The Building Community from Diversity program will feature leaders from four areas of the community. The forum will include panels with leaders from the areas of business, education, religion and community leadership. The goal of the forum is to create a dialogue on how diversity can build a stronger community.

Says Cleveland City Mayor Tom Rowland: “People should leave the dialogue with the understanding that not only is dialogue important, but it’s a vital part of the community development and it should be recognized in all aspects of community.”

People from more than 62 countries now call Cleveland and Bradley County home. “This diversity presents great opportunities for the city of Cleveland and Bradley County,” he said.

ORMS is an organization dedicated to promoting community awareness and the harmonious acceptance of ethnic and cultural diversity among its citizens. We work to provide the means and the tools necessary to build an empowered community that will embrace and utilize its own diversity.

Cleveland Mosaic Center is a proud 2010 partner of the United Way of Bradley County.

Here is the full list of panels, participants and moderators along with the schedule for the event:

Building Community with Diversity Forum Schedule
January 22, 2010 Cleveland State Community College Auditorium

9:00 AM Opening Comments

Prayer — Daniel Sylverston, President Cleveland Ministerial Association
Host Welcome — Carl Hite, President Cleveland State Community College
Welcome — Gary Ray, President Ocoee Regional Multicultural Service

Forum Purpose — Building Community with Diversity Forum Leader Ben Judkins
Opening Remarks — Mayor Tom Rowland, City of Cleveland
Opening Business Panel — Christian Höferle

9:15 AM Panel 1: Business and Diversity – The Globalization of the Economy

• Moderator:  Christian Höferle, Höferle Consulting
• Humanities Scholar: Richard Jones, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Lee University
• Dr. Ingomar Kovar, President & CEO Wacker Chemical Corporation N.A.
• Celia Schneck, HR Manager SIAG Aerysin LLC
• Brenda Sheehy, Small Business Specialist, CLSCC Business Development Center
• Hermilo Jasso, Assistant Professor of Business, Lee University
• Esmerelda Lee, Director, Garden Plaza, Life Care Center
• Robert Divine Immigration Attorney at Baker Donelson
• Gary Farlow, President Cleveland/Bradley County Chamber of Commerce

11:00 AM Panel 2: Education and Diversity – The Importance of Diversity to Education

• Moderator:  Carl Hite, President, Cleveland State Community College
• Humanities Scholar:  Murl Dirksen, Department of Anthropology, Lee University
• Brigitta Hoeferle, Montessori Kinder International School
• Matt Ryerson, United Way, Bradley County
• Lisa Eulo, Walker Valley High School
• Bill Estes, Department of Education, Lee University (Cleveland City Council)
• Aadyl Hamidi,  Whirlpool Cleveland Division
• Johnny McDaniel, Superintendent Bradley County Schools
• Rick Denning, Superintendent Cleveland City Schools

1:30 PM Annual Mosaic Awards for Community Leadership

1:45 PM Panel 3: Community Leadership and Diversity – The Voice of Social Change

• Moderator: Tom Rowland, Mayor, City of Cleveland
• Humanities Scholar: Donna Summerlin, Lee University, English Department
• Lawrence Armstrong, President NAACP
• George Vallejo, Manager, BB & T  Bank
• Jana Pankey, Department of Social Work, CLSCC
• Brenda Hughes, Director Bradley Initiative for Church and Community (BICC)
• Rafael Lastra, Director, Cleveland Mosaic Center
• Kevin Brooks, Tennessee House of Representatives in the 24th District.
• Wes Snyder, Cleveland Police Chief
• Avery Johnson, Vice Mayor of Cleveland

3:15 PM Religion and Diversity – A Moral Perspective

• Moderator: Daniel Sylverston, President Ministerial Association and Pastor, All Nations Church
• Humanities Scholar: Karen Mundy, Department of Sociology, Lee University
• Rev. Mike Travis, Superintendent of Region for The United Methodist Churches
• Dr. Dennis McGuire, Former COG General Overseer. Currently Director of International Multi-Cultural Ministries COG
• Dr. Jamison Work, Senior pastor Candies Creek Baptist, Member of Exec. Committee Southern Baptist Convention
• Dr. Michael Laney, Associate Pastor St James Cumberland Presbyterian Church of America / Lee University – Dept Chair, Communication
• Rabbi Wayne Koman, pastor of Temple of Truth Messianic Jew in Cleveland
• Sang Ehil Han , Overseer of COG in Korea – Asst Dean of Academics – Pentecostal Theological Seminary
• Reverend Dwight Herod, senior pastor Bowman Hills Seventh Day Adventist church.
• Dr. Victor Pagan, Assistant Director of COG World Missions
• Bishop Benjamin Feliz, International Director of Finance Church of God Of Prophecy

Remembering November 9, 1989

I still remember how it felt in the fall of 1989 – let me know if you do, too

Maybe I should have written something about Germany’s big anniversary earlier, but I have been pushing it back. Everybody else is publishing specials and stories on the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Why add to the noise?
Then I read this interview in the German Spiegel magazine: Tom Brokaw, legendary NBC news anchor, on how he remembers the 9th of November, 1989. That reminded me to overcome my procrastination and to put in words what I can recall of that exciting time.

So I finally managed to write a little piece for Chattarati. I copied the entire text at the bottom of this post. As much as I would like you to read it and comment on it, please take a look at the video clips first to get you in the mood. I’ve been watching some old TV footage from 1989 lately and I have to admit that it still gives me goose bumps 20 years later.

Please feel free to comment and share your memories of Germany’s peaceful revolution.

This is a feature report by Spiegel TV with English subtitles:

A CBC News report

A 6-minute piece with a little pathos

Tom Brokaw narrates a short video, prepared by NBC for the Atlantic Council

This is what I wrote for Chattarati:

When the Wall came down

My first contact with American culture was in January 1988, when I began my foreign student exchange program in Northwest Minnesota. I was a teenager of 17 years from a small town in the German state of Bavaria, and I didn’t know much about the world. The time I spent in Callaway and Detroit Lakes changed my life forever—and laid the foundation for my present life here in the United States.

Representing Germany in Minnesota

One of my responsibilities as an exchange student was giving presentations about my home country. I was surprised to encounter so much interest in my little corner of the world. Everyone wanted to know what life was like in (West) Germany. While many younger students at Detroit Lakes High School were eager to find out about things like the drinking age and speed limits, almost everyone had a common cross-cultural inquiry: Do you think the two Germanies will ever be united again?

My standard answer would be: “Yeah right! Wishful thinking. Not going to happen.” Growing up during the 1970s and 1980s in West Germany, I was taught there were several good reasons for the separation of our country. In my generation, no one I knew had any doubts about this: Our forefathers made some severe mistakes. Germany initiated two world wars and brought destruction and suffering to Europe. Taking away territories and splitting Germany in half was a just punishment for our ancestors’ crimes.

Reunification? No way! Why?

“Why should we be reunited?” I asked then. The world is split into a Western, capitalist part and an Eastern, communist one. Much of this is a result of events that started in Germany, and now the frontier line between East and West is the “inner-German” border between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Of course it would have been nice if the world had decided to end the Cold War and just get along, but not even the biggest optimists expected that.

Even though I had what I consider the privilege of growing up in the West, it is my understanding that this mindset dominated on both sides of the death strip that seperated Germany. My generation expected the status quo to remain the same.

Boy, were we wrong!

The Summer of 1989

Back in in Germany in the summer of 1989, I did what most of my peers did: go on vacation during summer break, travel to Italy, Spain, France, Greece, etc. When I got home there were occasional reports of East Germans seeking refuge in Western embassies in Budapest and Prague. Interesting news, yes. But not overly exciting. After all, there had been security breaches within the Warsaw Pact before, we had all heard about people successfully fleeing from the East before.

But in September 1989 things started to heat up. The Monday demonstrations began in Leipzig, Dresden, Halle, Magdeburg, Karl-Marx-Stadt (now: Chemnitz) and in other parts of the GDR. People were shouting “Wir sind das Volk!” (”We are the people!”). This was new—and unheard of. We started to take notice. We became anxious. Would the Stasi start shooting at people? We all remembered how violently the Solidarnosc movement in Poland had been pushed back. What if this turned into a disaster?

Gorbachev’s “Let ‘em be”

Amid this emerging uproar, the GDR celebrated its 40th anniversay in October 1989. During his visit to the festivities in East Berlin, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly said: “Trudnosti podsteregajut tech, kto ne reagirujet na shisn,” or, “Difficulties lurk for those who do not react to life.” This quote was later transcribed to mean: “Those who are late will be punished by life itself”.

It was the signal many had been waiting for: the Soviet Union would not stand in the way of the liberation movements in Eastern Europe. And it was Gorbachev’s answer to Ronald Reagan’s famous appeal in June 1987: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

It was then that we realized: This is serious. However, we still didn’t expect change to happen so quickly. Just a few weeks later, on November 9th, 1989, GDR leaders formally opened the borders. For the first time, East Germans were free to travel to the West. My family sat at home in front of the TV, watching in awe as people lined up in droves at the checkpoints. By the thousands, they crossed the inner-German border to get their first taste of the West.

All of a sudden, the worldview of an entire generation crumbled like the Berlin Wall. Every TV station in Germany covered the events live from Berlin and the border checkpoints. We watched as people from East Berlin and West Berlin climbed the Wall around Brandenburg Gate despite the fact that East German border patrol was still there, guns in hand. We looked at each other in disbelief and wondered: what’s next? And then I remembered what I had told my friends in Minnesota a year earlier. Exciting times.

20 years later — Reason to commemorate

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall and the 19th anniversary of German reunification. For me as a “Generation X-er” this is a big deal. I grew up in a divided country with a guilt complex. Today Germany has regained much of the respect it had lost throughout the 20th century. We are far from being a perfect nation, but the peaceful revolution of 1989 tought us an important lesson: Germans can change their destiny without violence. We’ve come a long way.

This past weekend, George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl took the stage inside the Berlin Friedrichstadtpalast to share their memories of 1989 in front of a silvery curtain at an historic cabaret venue. “Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush were Germany’s most important partners,” said Kohl, 79.

Giving Germans something they can be proud of

It was Kohl’s first public appearance since a fall last year at his home in southwestern Germany left him hospitalized and wheelchair-bound. “In German history we don’t have many reasons to be proud,” Kohl told the audience. “I have nothing better to be proud of than being proud of German unity.”

Diversity matters – and ORMS knows this

Diversity matters – and ORMS knows this

I said it before and I will continue to stress this topic: The world may not become smaller, but because our mobility has been improving so much in the last 100 years, our communities are becoming increasingly multi-cultural and multi-ethnical. There are residents from more than 60 different nations and backgrounds living in Bradley County and across the Southeast of Tennessee today.

Unlike in the past, when the USA were generally considered a “melting pot of cultures”, today’s world features a multitude of social groups who sometimes live and work next to each other – or in the best-case scenario – with each other.
That’s why I prefer the metaphor of a mosaic over the melting pot. All of us are parts of something bigger. Therefore it is necessary to understand where our neighbors come from and how their views on life may differ from our own. Understanding somebody else’s perspective not only makes us good neighbors – it broadens our horizon and it should helps us realize that not everything we think of as being “right” and “true” is right and true in a universal sense.

One of the organizations that embrace cultural, ethnical and national diversity in our community is ORMS – Ocoee Region Multicultural Services with its Cleveland Mosaic Center. I am proud to be a member of the ORMS board and our achievements in the past calendar year. We have big plans for the future and we are confident that our coming projects will benefit the entire community of the Ocoee region.

Currently ORMS is in the process of adjusting its leadership. While our two main officials – Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland as Co-Chairman and Lee University VP Gary Ray as Board President – will remain unchanged, the board has decided to appoint a number of additional leaders to assist in growing the organization. Come fall we should have a leadership in place that will reflect the multi-cultural character of our region and that will put our projects and plans into action.

Here is what the Cleveland Daily Banner had to say about this:

Multicultural agency seeks nominees

The nominating committee for the 2010 Ocoee Regional Multicultural Services is looking for people interested in serving on the organizations governing board.
Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland, said, he envisioned an organization aimed at helping legal immigrants assimilate into city life and benefit from educational and business opportunities available in the city and Bradley County.
“This would be a good opportunity for someone new to our city to become involved,” he said. “Who has better knowledge of how to help others fit in than someone who has gone through it themselves.”
ORMS President Gary Ray said it is important for leaders to step forward who can help continue building on the success of a slate of summer activities such as the crash course in German, the summer cultural camp for youth hosted by the Museum Center at Five Points and the German Way seminar aimed at identifying the differences and common characteristics shared by people in both countries.
“When WACKER and Volkswagen people move into this area and hit the education system they will find what they are looking for and that was followed up by Cleveland State Community College hosting an interpreters training session because interpreters are becoming more and more requested,” Ray said.
The organization strives to meet the needs of legal immigrants in three areas. The first is to help people assimilate on the individual and family level; secondly, to take advantage of educational opportunities by providing English language courses and cultural sensitivity training — anything that will help people become more aware of the value of diversity.
“Even if they are just taking a trip overseas and they want to learn conversational Spanish in a way that’s not offensive,” Ray said. “A new area is emerging in business development where we provide cultural services to businesses and organizations to help foster international business development.”
Hispanic and Russian cultures represent the largest groups among the 62 foreign nations in Cleveland.
“Our mission is to support legal immigrants to help them assimilate and become productive and recognize those who are contributing by spotlighting them as role models,” he said.
It is those role models Ray is asking to serve or if someone may nominate another person. Either way, nominees will be contact to see if they are willing to serve.
“In our Sept. 29 meeting, we will vote on those that are willing to serve,” Ray said.
For more information, please contact nominating committee members Brenda Sheehy by e-mail at bjsheehy@tsbdc.org; Michelle Davis, mdavis@southernheritagebank.com; or Eloise Waters, Eloise.waters@state.tn.us

Where I stand

This is my take on: Where I stand 

Let me introduce you to a community visioning initiative for the Chattanooga region. It is called Chattanooga Stand and I would like to encourage you to take their survey. If you care in the least what the area you live in will look like in a few years, you should make sure your voice is heard. The Chattanooga Metropolitan area will undergo a big transformation in the near future. The industries which have decided to invest here – Volkswagen and Wacker Chemie for instance – will most likely change our region more than most of us can imagine. That’s why I am convinced that initiatives like Chattanooga Stand are important. Taking the survey won’t take long. Just do it. Others have done it, too. You can read about their motivation here and here. 

This is why I want to present some of the factors that compelled me to get involved. 

I grew up in Weilheim, a small town in Southern Bavaria. That’s the biggest state in Germany, for those of you not familiar with European geography. Just like Tennessee, Bavaria has been a rather conservative region with a strong emphasis on values, traditions and religion. But Bavaria also has a very monocultural way of doing politics – on a state and on a communal level. One political party (the CSU) basically has kept a stronghold in state and county administrations for more than four decades. Action committees have traditionally always emerged from groups that consider themselves more liberal than the CSU, therefore carrying the stigma of not being represented by a majority of Bavarian voters. Which brings my to Chattanooga Stand. In this particular case it does not matter what side of the aisle you’re from. If you live in or around Chattanooga, you care about what’s going on, right?

So do I. I may not be an American citizen (yet), but I live here and I am proud to call this my family’s home. My wife, our first daughter and I moved to Cleveland, TN from Munich in July of 2004. When we picked Southeast Tennessee as our new home we thought that this area will only serve as a starting point for our American life. Having lived in a major European city we could not imagine to make Smalltown USA our home. Other big cities were on our list to move to in the future.
Well, almost five years have passed and we’re still here. We have a second daughter now, our first “born in the U.S.A.” child. My hair is turning gray (much to the delight of my wife). And we are growing roots here. Not because we have been too lazy to pack our stuff again and move on. It is because we like it here. More than I would have ever thought we would. 

However, you will never find me saying that the U.S. are better then Germany or that Germany is better than America. Still, there are certain characteristics to the Chattanooga area that we feel make our lives as a family a lot nicer here. 
Take cost of living, for instance. Our five bedroom/three bathroom, 2,600 sq.ft. house (that’s 240 square meters for all you metric addicts like me) cost roughly $180,000 when we bought it in 2004. Apart from the fact that you can barely find a house that size on a lot as big as ours in central Munich, you simply cannot afford to buy real estate on this scale where we lived in Germany. At least not if you are on an average income level. Even in my small hometown a house that size would have cost us more than $500k. So, I guess it’s fair to say: In terms of housing we upgraded quite a bit by moving. 
Although we live in a rather rural area we never feel left out. Sure, this is no New York, Atlanta, San Francisco or Chicago. But for urbanites like me Chattanooga is my saving grace. Where else would I go for parks, shopping, dining, events? And I admit: At first, we would always drive to Atlanta when we missed this special city feeling. We still do, once in a while. But I discovered that Chattanooga has so much more to offer than what most people see during their first visits. Of course there are all the obvious sites: Hunter Museum, TN Aquarium and the Choo Choo (which, btw, is probably the one thing most Germans will associate Chattanooga with).

Just this past weekend I was once again reminded of the charme and the beauty of the North Shore. City living doesn’t get much nicer than that. Or take the downtown area which seems to improve year after year. Or the still rough-around-the-edges charme of the Southside. Having read about Chattanooga’s history in the second half of the 20th century I realize what an enormous effort it must have been to revitalize this city and to make it what is today. It took people with a vision to accomplish that. And it will again take people who are engaged in our communities to shape the future of this city and its surroundings.

Let me reiterate the word surroundings. With VW at Enterprise South and Wacker Chemie in Bradley County our future is not only within the Chattanooga city limits (which are about to change, I hear). Chattanooga will remain the nexus, but its neighbors will be affected by the impending transformation just as much. In that regard Bradley County and Cleveland are Chattanooga’s closest neighbors with I-75 becoming the ever more important arterial connection. Most of our future German friends and fellow citizens will move into this area. We should start to get ready for them. Let me quote Bradley County School board Chairman David Kelley who recently said: “We are becoming a world community. We need to be thinking like a world community.” 
And I’d like to add: Let’s start acting like one. 

Chattanooga Stand allows all of us to be the difference we want to see happening. Staying silent is not an option. Some of us may not like what the majority will consider the most pressing issues. But that’s democracy. Only if you make yourself heard, you’ll get a chance to influence the debate and the decisions. 

My family and I have grown to love it here. There are many positives and also quite some negatives. No place is perfect. But we can at least try to get the Chattanooga Metro Area even closer to becoming the ideal place to live.

Pre-She-Ate-CHA.