Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home

Episode 50 Dylan Holmes - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Dylan Holmes, Huntington High School Senior, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:28 1. Dylan, you are a senior at Huntington High School, greatly involved at school both as a student and an athlete.
 
Let’s start here today.
 
You are very active in Kappa League. Tell me what Kappa League is and some of the different things you do as part of Kappa League.
 
2:27 2. You are also a member of Raider Court and I believe you recently went to Washington DC for Close Up as part of Raider Court. Tell me about Raider Court, what it is and some of the different skills you learn as part of the program.
 
5:31 3. We have a long history in Shreveport-Bossier of exporting many of our community’s best and brightest talents. They grow up here, go away to college, accumulate great knowledge, build powerful networks, and end up never returning to live here. With all of that said, would you ever consider living here after college? If not, how would Shreveport-Bossier have to change from what you see today to be a place you would want to return to, to live after college?
 
6:56 4. Let’s talk hypothetically for a second. You are in Washington DC for another trip and you start up a conversation with a group of students from the east coast who have never heard of Shreveport-Bossier. They say, “Dylan, what’s it like where you live?” What do you tell them?
 
7:46 5. As you look around the Shreveport-Bossier community, what are the things you see that make you most hopeful that life is getting better here and that we are making progress as a community?
 
13:25 6. Lastly, what’s the community you want to see here?

Episode 49 Michael Pierce - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Michael Pierce, Photographer and Founder of the Instagram page @scruffyshabbyshreveport, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:32 1. Michael, I only first became aware of you when you tagged the Y on Instagram after taking some absolutely phenomenal photos of the Downtown Y. Your Instagram handle is “Scruffyshabbyshreveport” and you describe your Instagram page as “celebrating Shreveport Louisiana’s beautifully endangered places.”
 
Let’s start here today. The first post I see on your page is dated December 3, 2021. Tell me about the genesis of “Scruffyshabbyshreveport” and how this wonderful project you have been pursuing came about?
 
3:35 2. In just a little more than a year you have built an impressive following. Your Instagram account already has 2188 followers and what I find most remarkable is the community you have built on Instagram who comment on your posts and help you as you document the history of our city.
 
How do you think about building community around your work? And is that important to you?
 
8:42 3. You once said:
 
“There’s beauty in absolutely everything around us. Once we start paying attention to that, you’ll start to see it more and start to appreciate it more.”
 
You seem to be tapping into something people are interested in, even though two of the recurring themes on this podcast have been the amount of apathy that exists in this community as well as the general sense of low self-esteem.
 
Aside from your incredible photos, what do you attribute the success of this project to?
 
15:44 4. One of the things we’ve been grappling with on this podcast and often asking is, who are as a community? What is our identity?
 
When friends of yours who have never been here ask you what Shreveport-Bossier is like, what do you tell them? How do you describe it?
 
18:00 5. What’s the future hold for the “Scruffyshabbyshreveport” project and for Michael Pierce in general?

Episode 48 Robert Trudeau -”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Historian Robert Trudeau sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:42 1. Let’s start here today.
 
I’ve asked a couple of our guests a similar question and it feels only appropriate to ask you. You have a friend or friends coming to visit Shreveport-Bossier. They’ve never been here before and only have two days in town. Where all do you take them to give a sense of your Shreveport-Bossier?
 
3:28 2. You once said:
 
“Renovation, new energy and recognition of the history of our town is the key to our future.”
 
For the last several years, you have led walking tours, one east of Common downtown and one west of Common. I also believe you do one through Betty Virginia Park.
 
I was fortunate enough to do the two downtown tours recently with you and it gave me a far deeper sense of appreciation for so many aspects of our community. After doing the tours, I told you I felt that every Caddo Parish high school student should do these two tours with you and I hope to help see if I can’t make that collaboration possible.
 
A recurring theme on our podcast has been our community’s low self-esteem and our difficulty at keeping our best and brightest. In my opinion, participating with you on these tours can’t help but increase someone’s feelings for our community and to do the tours with our future while they’re still young can only be a positive thing.
 
Any way, there are several possible questions here. First, would you please share a couple of your favorite stories about our community’s past that you’ve learned through your research to prepare for these different walking tours.
 
13:23 3. I’ve known you since I came back to town in 2005 and you always struck me as someone who sees opportunity where others see challenges. I recently stumbled on this quote of yours:
 
“I love Shreveport because it is a city of opportunity. When you look around the 600 block of Texas street, as I do you probably see an aging city. But I see beautiful, glamorous brick work and plenty of opportunity for businesses to be started up and to follow in the footsteps of people who were very successful in this block in a bygone era.”
 
How do we get more of our people to feel great about living and being in Shreveport-Bossier?
 
16:42 4. At the end of 2016, , after 35 years, you retired from teaching at Caddo Magnet High where you had taught world geography, video journalism and fine arts survey.
 
As someone who spent a career with our young students, how do you think we do a better job in the future of convincing our best and brightest to come back here after college?
 
20:22 5. In your opinion, what’s holding us back from being one of the next, great small American cities?
 
23:45 6. What makes you optimistic about our future?

Episode 47 Tommy Williams - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Tommy Williams, President and Founder of Williams Financial Advisors, LLC, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:31 1. Tommy, we will get to more of your accomplishments and background in future questions but let’s start here today. You were born and raised in Shreveport and have seen Shreveport go through many changes and many ups and downs.
 
How is Shreveport-Bossier doing in 2023 from your perspective?
 
2:06 2. You are an active community leader and have served on numerous boards including, to name but a few, President of the Financial Planning Association Ark-La-Tex Chapter, Chairman of the Allocations Committee for United Way of North Louisiana, Co-Chairman of the fundraising campaign for Community Renewal International, a board member of Live Oak Retirement Community, a board member and Chairman of the Membership Committee for the Committee of One Hundred, and for nine years you chaired the Junior Achievement of North Louisiana Business Hall of Fame.
 
Where does this intense interest and commitment to making our community better come from?
 
5:58 3. From your perspective, how do we get more people from my generation or even the generations coming behind me to take an active role, like you have, in pushing our community to reach its fullest potential?
 
12:25 4. You are a Wealth Advisor and Founder of Williams Financial Advisors. Every Sunday since 2009, you have authored a column on the front page of the business section of the Shreveport Times entitled “Financial Fundamentals”.
 
You are a great financial mind in this community and a wealth of knowledge. Would you mind sharing just a few of your financial fundamentals or financial words of wisdom?
 
19:49 5. What’s holding us back from becoming one of the next, great small cities in America?
 
32:35 6. What makes you optimistic about our community’s future?

Episode 46 Thomas Pressly - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Louisiana State Representative Thomas Pressly sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:33 1. Thomas, let’s start here today.
 
We have now done close to 50 interviews in this series. In our very first interview, Al Childs, in talking about the future of our community said, “I can’t tell you who the leaders are but I can tell you where they are. They’re in your generation, not mine.”
 
You actually represent the generation after me. And as I look around at you guys – whether it’s you, Mike Busada, Dinero’ Washington, Cassie Hammett, Madison Poche, Gabriel Balderas – to name but a very few, I see an unusually committed group of people, talented and willing to work to take responsibility for making our community better for the future.
 
Do you see what I see and do you feel part of a generation that is unusually committed to making our community better?
 
2:30 2. You are the first person we have interviewed who currently holds a political office. You are a Louisiana State Representative, 1 of 105 members in the state and 1 of 10 state representatives who represent either Caddo and/or Bossier Parish.
 
The regular legislative session in Baton Rouge this year runs from April 10-June 8.
 
What do you see other parts of the state doing better than our community? Or, in other words, from any perspective – economically, socially, legislatively, etc – what could this community learn from other areas in the state?
 
7:46 3. As you were preparing the campaign for your current seat, you wrote the following which I love:
 
“Ready or not, those of us in our 20s and 30s who grew up in Shreveport-Bossier and returned home are ready to take the reins of leadership. More importantly, because of the education we received – both inside and outside of Caddo and Bossier Parish classrooms – we are capable of leading this community. We understand there are systematic challenges in Shreveport-Bossier City that we must overcome in order for our community to reach its full potential. From an aging infrastructure and generational poverty to stagnate wage growth and a real estate market that could use a boost, the challenges that we as a community face are as real as they are vast.”
 
Talk to me about some of the things you see as our community’s greatest challenges.
 
11:34 4. In the same article as the previous quote I read, you also wrote the following:
 
“To build up our community, we must promote the positive opportunities and experiences that exist in northwest Louisiana. We can be a strong community, but we must be willing to work together – Shreveport, Bossier City and surrounding towns must be willing to put aside local differences and work together to make positive changes for us all. Additionally, we must change our attitude and perspective, particularly when we travel to or live in other communities. Instead of talking about the negatives, we must talk about the opportunities.”
 
Your quote above addresses some of the challenges we face as a community, both in terms of what is often a negative image of self and also a division between political views, racial backgrounds and socioeconomic situations.
 
Let’s break my question into two parts:
 
a. First, from your perspective, how do we get people from different backgrounds and opinions to collaborate more in the future toward the betterment of our community?
 
16:53 b. Second, you always strike me as a very positive person with a strong sense of pride of who we are as a community and what we can become. What words of wisdom or advice do you have for people who struggle with their image as Shreveport-Bossier residents?
 
22:39 5. Lastly, what makes you hopeful about our future?

Episode 45 Dr. Timothy Jones - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Dr. Timothy Jones, Pastor of Peaceful Rest Missionary Baptist Church, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:32 1. Dr. Jones, let’s start here today. You were born and raised in Shreveport, the 11th of 13 children born to Ennis and Thelma Jones.
 
Since 1994, you have served as the Pastor of Peaceful Rest Missionary Baptist Church. During your tenure, your church has experienced a remarkable six-fold growth of membership.
 
Tell me about your church and its community development organization, its preschool and its learning center.
 
5:08 2. In speaking about our community, you once said:
 
"…I think there is apathy in this town. It's across the board. I mean socially, economically, spiritually.”
 
From your perspective, why is there so much apathy? And what do you see as some of the steps we can take to create more engagement from our people in the future?
 
10:16 3. I want to stick with a couple of other quotes from you. You once said the following about our local media:
 
“The media can do a better job of highlighting more of the positive coming out of Cedar Grove. I think all of the media outlets can do a much better job of portraying the community in a better light or positive things that go on in the community."
 
How do we get the media to focus more on telling positive stories that lift up our city and its people?
 
15:06 4. In speaking about the media, you also talked about how the stories they tell directly impact our economic development efforts. You said:
 
"If I am a prospective corporation looking to relocate, of course I am going to check out the news outlets. But if most of what is there is all negative and few things are positive, I think that is going to hurt my perspective of a community and may impact my decision to come or not come."
 
Some people say that we still have strained racial relations in this community. Do you agree with that and do you think the state of our race relations affects our ability to recruit prospective corporations?
 
20:42 5. What is holding us back as a community?
 
28:12 6. What makes you hopeful about the future of our community?

Episode 44 KaDavien Baylor - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

KaDavien Baylor, Public Artist, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:51 1. Pat Viser wrote a great piece on you for 64 Parishes and I’d like to begin today with her first paragraph:
 
“KaDavien Baylor is best known as a public artist—a painter of large, brightly colored murals on Shreveport’s Valencia Park and Recreation Center’s Origin Court basketball court, along the brick wall of Galilee’s Stewart-Belle Stadium in the Allendale community, inside Linwood Public Charter School, and on a fence outside of popular Uptown Bar and Lounge, to name a few. Baylor makes creativity work for him—to make change, to create hope, to heal communities, and to encourage investment and ownership. He has people talking about murals throughout northwest Louisiana and what they can do to generate dialogue around a subject or community issue. His works inspire communities to create vibrant neighborhoods people want to visit, live in, and take care of, neighborhoods that bring people together to celebrate heritage and history.” 
 
Now I want to move to a quote of yours. You once said,
 
“I want to speak to the positive identity of Shreveport. We have a welcoming identity for all kinds of people.”
 
Talk to me if you could about this above quote. And, from your perspective, what is our identity?
 
4:42 2. In speaking about some of the ways our community has been governed in the past, Councilwoman Levette Fuller recently wrote, “(It) puts distance between government and citizens and makes participation intimidating. It makes mediocrity satisfying. It has led to a malaise and apathy because we assert ‘this is just the way things are.’
 
In preparing for today I came across a quote of yours that almost offers a solution to this community apathy. You said:
 
“Public Art allows people to take ownership in their community. When they feel like they’ve added or contributed to their community in a certain way, it makes them more proud of it. That’s why we take this approach.”
 
Talk to me about your above quote. And tell me a little about your process of creating public art and your beliefs around how public art can lead to greater community engagement.
 
8:38 3. I d like to stick with quotes of yours I came across because I found so many great ones. You once said:
 
“Our people need to see diversity, inclusion and how community can come together and make things stronger and better and have a more powerful impact.”
 
Talk to me more about what you meant with the above quote.
 
9:52 4. Let’s move to another quote of yours. You once said:
 
“Shreveport is a blank canvas with a lot of people who need help.”
 
Talk more about this if you could.
 
11:17 5. Butterflies factor heavily in your murals. I’ve read that they represent our community’s beauty and potential.
 
When you look at our community, what do you see as our great potential?
 
13:12 6. Lastly, I’d like to return to the wonderful article Pat Viser wrote about you. In the article, you said:
 
“Art in public spaces reflects and reveals our society, enhances meaning in our civic areas, and adds uniqueness to our communities. I have been honored to work on several projects that I believe have started transformation within our local communities. I hope to continue to work with public art that heals communities through the creation of landmarks.”
 
What does the transformation in our communities that has begun to take shape look and feel like? And, describe in an ideal world what our ultimate transformation looks and feels like?

Episode 43 Kelly Rouse - ”Shreveport-Bossier - My City, My Community, My Home”

Kelly Rouse, Director of Community School Services at Holy Angels, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:40 1. Kelly, let’s go ahead and jump in. This past August, you launched Community School in partnership with Holy Angels.
 
Tell me about Community School. I know it provides individuals with disabilities with therapeutic and educational offerings.
 
What age individuals are eligible to participate? What are some of the areas of development targeted by the school? And what makes Community School a unique offering for our special needs population?
 
7:42 2. You once said the following in speaking about Autism:
 
"Inside each kid is a typical boy or girl. As problems are chipped away and more are chipped away, we see more of their personality of who they're meant to be.”
 
Talk to me about this quote. And is it applicable to all the work you do, whether you’re working with someone with Autism, Downs, Tourette’s, Muscular Dystrophy, Cerebral Palsy, Intellectual Disability, ADHD, Anxiety disorders, Angelman’s, etc?
 
11:11 3. I read that back in 2013, less than one third of all students with special needs went on to graduate from Louisiana public high schools.
 
Are the statistics today pretty similar? What tools are Louisiana public high schools most lacking to fully support our students with special needs?
 
27:58 4. You serve on the Rare Disease Advisory Council, if I’m not mistaken as the only representative from the Shreveport-Bossier area.
 
How is Shreveport-Bossier doing in terms of rising to take care of its special needs population, compared to the rest of the state? And how about, compared to the rest of the country?
 
34:28 5. You have been in the field, doing this incredible work for nearly 20 years now. What is more challenging today in the field than it was when you first began?
 
37:52 6. Lastly, talk about some areas that are better in your field of work today than they have been throughout your career?

Episode 42 Candace Higginbotham - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Candace Higginbotham, formerly with HUD and the Department of Community Development, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:27 1. Correct me if I’m mistaken. You worked for many years for the Department of Housing & Urban Development, or HUD as many people know it. Talk to me about some of the roles and responsibilities of HUD and the department’s connection and importance to this community.
 
11:59 2. I believe you were deeply involved in the Choice Neighborhoods project. Can you talk some about the process of securing the monies for the project, where Choice Neighborhoods is located and why it’s an important development for our community?
 
21:39 3. You spent a career in public service. For those listening to you who want to do more for the community and/or who are considering pursuing a career in public service, what words of wisdom can you share with them?
 
44:42 4. Can you talk to me about some of the people in the community who inspire you?
 
1:12:13 5. What makes you optimistic about the future of our community?

Episode 41 Mike Busada - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Mike Busada, Attorney and Community Activist, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:
 
0:25 1. Mike, let’s start here today.
 
You are extremely active in our community, serving on numerous boards including the LSU Health Science Center Shreveport Foundation, Shreveport-Bossier Military Affairs Council, Bossier Chamber of Commerce, and the Red River Valley Association.
 
Who taught you the importance of service? And why do you care so much about this community?
 
7:00 2. You are Senior Counsel for Butler Snow Law Firm. I believe your areas of expertise are bond finance and economic development financing law.
 
For us lay people, talk to me about who some of your clients are and the type of law work you typically focus on.
 
9:43 3. You are a member of the Louisiana Committee of 100 for Economic Development. There are less than 20 people from Shreveport-Bossier who sit on this important committee.
 
Talk to me about some of the work of the Louisiana Committee of 100 for Economic Development. How often do you meet, where do the meetings take place, and what type of work does the committee do?
 
15:59 4. In a historic partnership, the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau together with the City of Shreveport, the City of Bossier City, the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, the Bossier Chamber of Commerce, the Shreveport-Bossier African American Chamber of Commerce, and other local community organizations are working together to develop a Destination Master Plan and Community Brand.
 
While the Convention and Tourist Bureau has led the project and is funding the initiative, a steering committee with representatives from around the area has been organized to offer guidance and assistance.
 
You are one of 16 people who sit on the steering committee. Talk to me about the importance of this project and where we are so far in the process.
 
37:03 5. In your opinion, what is holding us back from being one of the next, great small cities in America?
 
44:50 6. What makes you optimistic about our community’s future?