(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 446: Do It for the Neighborhood Part 2

This week we’re listening in to PART 2 of a one to one conversation between David Longoria of LISC in Phoenix and Ryan Winkle of RAIL CDC. They discuss the community work they are doing in Mesa along the light rail line and how they respond to unforeseen outcomes.

This episode was produced in partnership with Mpact. Find out more about the annual conference at http://mpactmobility.org

To listen in on this episode, check out Streetsblog USA, or find it in our archive.

David Longoria (1m 36s):
Hey everyone, I’m David Longoria with LISC Phoenix. We’ve been talking with Ryan Winkle of Rail CDC and we’ve brought the first story up to the opening of the Region’s first Light Rail transit line, which was a huge investment connecting the cities of Phoenix and Tempe to the city of Mesa. And in the last episode, we closed with the effort to support small businesses and we’ll pick it up right from there. Ryan, welcome back. Thank

Ryan Winkle (2m 5s):
Thank You

David Longoria (2m 6s):
How did businesses do during the construction of Light Rail and then what happened to them when the line opened?

Ryan Winkle (2m 12s):
So during Light Rail construction, this whole process of, we had talked earlier how that You know the city had agreed to do some sort of payment of their, their bills during the summer. Cuz obviously the heat and cooling here, the cooling in the summertime, one of the highest expenses. And if they agreed to do You, know at least four small business workshops during the, during the year as well as You know all the monthly kind of merchant meetings and all these different little things. Right. And then with Ned Co at the time being the micro lender and kind of leader of this, and then Rail as the Community Development Corporation, as the partnership to the C D F I.

Ryan Winkle (2m 55s):
And so during this time they felt like they had a lot of support. There was a lot of like family building and this, this kind of very like friendly You know everyone was norm at the time. Norm from Cheer You. know what I mean? That norm from Cheers feeling. Yeah. It was very close knit. It felt good. And by the time light Rail was ending, everyone was very like, relieved. It was like, oh my gosh, yes. We made it like we’ve succeeded. We’ve lasted through this. Now, like I said, we had, we had, we did lose like about 10 businesses, right? But comparatively to other core corridors, I mean we had, I don’t know, probably a little over a hundred businesses total in our like that we worked with in our corridor. So 10 that we knew went outta business, it’s less than 10%, right?

Ryan Winkle (3m 37s):
Other corridors are 30 to 50% business loss. And some of them to this day are still pretty much like war zones, miliary zones, right? And so I won’t mention where those are, but there are some like that I have no, I I have no idea what you’re talking about. Yeah. And so when we gained those 10 business during that time too, we felt great. We had a great success. We had a net zero business loss. This is a great success pointing at the idea that you can plan for this, right? You can plan to keep businesses where they are. You can plan to have small mom and pops that have a, a lender and some support and some technical assistance. And then you can plan for them to go into the future and be happy in this space, in this place where we all call You know our area, but then comes in the developer.

Ryan Winkle (4m 22s):
So You know. Yeah. And this always becomes that like evil being the developers and the city and then You know. Yeah. That whole, that whole thing that you always here You know. And there’s always this small business. You know, I remember one very specifically, it was a coffee shop and the developers that had come in, they bought many of the buildings from the legacy owners and now we’re like, well, we wanna raise our rents. And if you don’t want to pay and that’s fine, you can just leave You know, not a problem. But what I found out later is that, that You know it’s actually cheaper for them just to house the building than to keep a tenant in it. Cuz then they don’t gotta do the improvements. All these different things, right? All these things happen. So this one woman at this coffee shop was like, well, like it’s just time for us to sell and it’s time.

Ryan Winkle (5m 5s):
I’m like, no, you’re just falling into the trap. Like, don’t do it. You know things are gonna get really good here really soon. Like just few more years. Come on, stay You know. And they’re like, nah, this is a young person’s game. And then, then You know all these things, right? And the developers, they’re just gonna take it over anyways and You know that kind of a thing. And so next thing You know, they, they did sell and their building was bought by a developer who turned it into sort of a very quiet sort of office building. I don’t even know, I don’t know what happens there anymore, but it was a really cool old house. It was a coffee shop. You know, it was like, I, I was, I used to go to there growing up like as a kid, right? Yeah. To see cool bands and stuff like that. So now it’s, it’s along with many other business buildings that were bought during that time that had very decent businesses that could have been to this day existing but did not because of whatever changes or just not, not extending their, their rents.

Ryan Winkle (5m 57s):
And what that that told us was that man, like we, I felt responsible. Like I’m like, we worked so hard to like make this work and like build everybody up only to really build up the developers’ ability to buy a better place for the future for their family or their investors. Right? And So, that hurt, that hurt bad You know. Cuz you’re like, dang, like how could I have done this to my place? You? know what I mean? Yeah. I grew up down the street from this Downtown, it’s your

David Longoria (6m 25s):
Home, it’s your home, it’s your hood. It’s like,

Ryan Winkle (6m 28s):
And the people and the people like You know when, when Betty was selling, I was like, I was looking at her face and she just looked so sad. And I’m like, man, Betty, like, that’s Betty and that was You know this person. That was that person. Now they’re gone. Like, and they had no choice in it. They had zero power. That’s, that’s why we had changed our total like model of like everything we do has to, and and, and somehow the people staying where they’re at and and owning and sharing in the wealth of the future because, well, we’re in the United States, right? United States real estate is how you make money. That’s like You know you buy something, you sell it later for a lot more money or you rent it or something. Right?

Ryan Winkle (7m 8s):
And so the fact that we hadn’t thought about that to me was almost like someone just hit me in the face, You know like how, how? Like how was I so stupid You? know what I mean? Like that’s when we changed that. So in the meantime though, like thinking about how that changed too now though I was on the, the board directors for real, I was one of the founders for a long time and I was kind of taking a little bit of a backseat role at that time. So I was like, I I didn’t even know to how to process that. I mean it was, it was so sad. You know cuz we had thought we won. Yeah. And then as kind of time went on and we started getting towards like the pandemic type time, that’s when I, I kind of was like, dang, all right, it’s time again. It’s time to get back into this, into this game or like my head back into it at least, right?

Ryan Winkle (7m 51s):
Yeah. So yeah, that’s, that was like a big transition for me. And I think for a lot of folks, You know.

David Longoria (7m 57s):
So in describing how you were able to navigate this space during construction and then immediately right after you mentioned sort of this diverse array of different resources that businesses could take advantage of in order to make sure that they persisted and remained. And, and I’m curious as to, is this what’s missing in so many other places where these type of infrastructure improvements and investments are, are occurring? Is this, what, is this the lesson I guess, or one of the lessons that particularly local governments can take away from this is you need to offer a full and diverse, almost like start to finish menu, if you will, of services that, that businesses and communities can use at their disposal or have at their disposal.

David Longoria (8m 49s):
And, and you mentioned a couple of even these other projects that are happening close by. Is that what’s missing? Is that, what is, is that what cities and towns are not taking note of

Ryan Winkle (9m 0s):
In an easy way? I would say yes because that is what they’re missing. But once again, is it their job to do that? And are they, and would they be good at doing it because lots of cities and like other organizations offer small business TA or certain services, right? But I think it’s, once again, like I always go back to it’s not how you, it’s not what it is. It’s like how you’re doing it. And so I think people don’t understand that it’s, once again, to your point, this is not like a hey risk light Rail construction for three to five years. Like that’s what it is. And then it’s over and it’s good You know. Like it really is like that 10 year idea. Cuz if the idea was in the very beginning of light Rail like, hey, 10 years, what does this place look like?

Ryan Winkle (9m 42s):
I any real estate professional would’ve told you, well what’s gonna happen is what soon as light Rail goes instruction, everything’s gonna try to sell. These people are gonna buy it up. And they would’ve told us a whole se secret. So it wouldn’t, it’s not even a secret. You know she had to. And so, so I mean if we would’ve known that, then what we could have also done is worked with the, the people who are these legacy owners and like, Hey, look, I know you wanna make money. I know, but how do we, how do we buy as a community? Or how do we use this wealth and this this like long standing this that we’re getting through the light Rail time and tough, tough, toughen it out. How is that rewarded in the future of wealth building for the people that are doing it or the community in general? Cause on top of, on top of even that, those businesses being gone, I can almost guarantee you that wealth will go, there will not be another great mom and pop.

Ryan Winkle (10m 30s):
It’ll probably be some chain or something You know. And, and that’s, and then chains are great. They’re needed too. But like we’ve, we’ve really tried to keep the Downtown very unique and original. Like it is not any town u s a where you go and you see the chilies and the whatever. There’s, there’s none of that. There’s none of that there. Yeah.

David Longoria (10m 46s):
You bring up a really good point because it’s happening right now, right? We’re seeing this redevelopment occur in Downtown, Mesa and You know you mentioned the developers. The developers, right? Yeah. But it’s, it’s not just them, right? It’s also the big institutions, right? So like thinking of ASU in this case who have put a lot of investment into Downtown Mesa and largely because of, of light Rail, right? The opening of the light Rail extension into Mesa. And even since then we’ve had an additional extension that goes further east, right? So my, my question is to you is like between all the developers who are, who are doing like the market rate housing, right?

David Longoria (11m 30s):
That are building all the market rate housing or the institutions that are expanding their reach into new places like asu, how do the local residents connect with these developers and institutions or other changes in the light Rail, like the further extensions of the line? And how does Rail, how do you help facilitate and translate that and connect with folks or make that connection between, between folks? What is it like and, and where do you fit in? Because you talked about this immense responsibility that you have and sort of this feeling of almost guilt, if you will, in some of the repercussions or some of the effects that happened.

David Longoria (12m 12s):
So what, what were your own lessons and what did you take from it and how did you, what are you doing now that maybe you didn’t take into account before?

Ryan Winkle (12m 18s):
One of the things that I, I think going back to the idea of when pandemic happened, right? The great thing about the pandemic, and I’m sure a lot of people don’t talk about some positives of this time, was the fact that it finally showed the weaknesses that, that, that the services already have. That there was always a problem, but it just wasn’t so obvious, right? And so when the pandemic happened, everyone’s like, wow, like this has always been a problem, but now we really need to address it because we have to You know and there’s the federal funding coming down and it’s just going places and we You know we gotta do something in reigniting what we’re up to. We had started re questioning our own models, right? And so we really brought much more also this like equity, right?

Ryan Winkle (13m 2s):
The equity lens in, into it, right? And so when we were kind of gearing up during the pandemic for a lot of the small business work that we’re already doing, but started thinking about bigger targets, right? We decided finally to grow up a little bit and get an executive director, right? This is right before kind of the pandemic time and really get some grants for some real small business ta like on our own, our personal Ned Co had gone away, it was just us now. And it was a different time, a different place. Light Rail had long passed, businesses have been changing hands a little bit. And now while the Downtown was kind of a little bit on its own because it’s, it had been existing for a little bit, the, the sidelines like Southside Neighborhood were starting to really feel the effect of the investment from the Downtown area.

Ryan Winkle (13m 52s):
So pandemic came, we had a news s we had some grants, the city and everyone else, and everyone and their mother was putting You know like resources into like central areas, right? In downtowns, right? And we had thought, man, like we could continue our work here or we could take our amount that we have and really push it to someone who needs it more, right? Yeah. Like downtown’s cool, they got 20 people trying to do stuff with ’em, they’re fine. And so we started thinking about the Latino businesses, the Spanish speaking businesses and how they were accessing these services. So just like back when the light Rail was starting and people didn’t know how to get these services and we were the connector piece walking around the pollinator You know, walking into businesses saying things.

Ryan Winkle (14m 35s):
Once again, we became that right? But this time we took a much bigger role in actually like going to the developers in the city and saying like, that’s we want better, we want something better. And then they’re like, yeah, well who cares? So does everybody, like what, what do you guys say about that? We’re like, well we got all these people now and all this neighborhood right here, they want better too. And then they’re go, oh, oh yeah, yeah. Forgot the verse. Yeah. The voters You know when the voters want something that it’s a little bit different, right? And so I remember the, the mayor that was really good, that broth, the light Rail, he always told us, he’s like, listen, I wanna present these ideas, but there are neighborhoods that will fight that idea to the death, right?

Ryan Winkle (15m 17s):
And they have much bigger spending power and all these different things than than You know the you little group over here. So what I need you to do is get the neighborhood together, have ’em come as a group, and then if you push from the bottom, I’ll push in the top and we can squeeze the middle and they have to do something, right. It’s a, it’s a friction game. And so, so we really started really focusing on how do we really empower the people to come and actually be active on top of us kind of being a like stick our head up and take the blow So that the neighborhood could, could like get the benefit, right? A good example of that would be when, when all the Cares Act money came out and stuff like that and, and the cities were flooded with it. So like, let’s just get it out. We only have a short amount of time.

Ryan Winkle (15m 58s):
Let’s get it out. You know. And so we saw it going out to a lot of businesses that already knew how to interact with the city. I already knew how to fill out some paperwork, You know. And some of those were the business we’ve been working with forever on Main. Cuz we’re like, yeah, You know how to do this now you can do it You know. Yeah. But then there wasn’t a Spanish version and so we’re like, and not even that, even if you did speak Spanish and you could fill out the version, what really was the likelihood that you understood what all these small print things meant that when you got this money or whatever or how to get the money or You know. So during this time of Covid, we were the only psychos that were like legitimately borrowing a building. We set up some tables, some computers and being face to face the table of course with masks, You know stuff like that.

Ryan Winkle (16m 41s):
But to get this money into these small businesses, when that happened, we worked with Lis once again. LISC had kind of brokered a deal with the city of Mesa to say, yeah, let us kind of help you do this and we’ll track it. You know, we’ll do all the reporting on it. Which of the city of Mesa is like, oh my God, Thank you. Yes, please do it You know because this is crazy. It’s funny. And then so when it all shook out and said and done, when you look at the businesses that got the, all those services and that and that and that extra, those resources, it was all in the west side of Mesa. A ton of them were Spanish seeking businesses all in the exact areas that we worked. Right.

Ryan Winkle (17m 21s):
Coincidence, I think not You know cause cause we were targeting that, right? It took a very systematic mental approach to say we’re not trying to be swooping as white saviors here. We’re, we’re trying to swoop in in a place that has said we need help and nobody’s helping us You know how, how do we do it?

David Longoria (17m 42s):
So I think it goes without saying that so much of Rail’s success and what Rail does differently is behind the fact that it takes time to build trust with folks and it extracts, it extracts that trust as we, as we talked about last time. And we’re in this right, as we also mentioned for the long game, you unveil it and you support it. And, and these things sort of cascade, right? It has this effect of sort of rippling out from these small interventions that occur within these communities. And you’ve also alluded to the fact that folks have the right to be involved, right?

David Longoria (18m 22s):
But it’s also a responsibility or an obligation. And when government does engage,

Ryan Winkle (18m 27s):
I got that from Joel Bookman ever since he, he said that one time telling teaching me about committee organizing in 2000 like 13 and or I don’t Yeah. 2013. And I’ve kept that statement in my head forever. Cause I’m like, yeah, it is responsibility. It’s not just a Right You know. Yeah. It’s a responsibility.

David Longoria (18m 45s):
Absolutely. I love Joel. That’s awesome. He’s been such a great mentor. We could talk about Joel Bookman Oh my gosh. In another entirely other episode. Oh, absolute. Yeah. Part three, Joel Bookman. Yeah. But, okay, so like people have this responsibility and also that sort of works hand in hand with when governments do get involved, they tend to have the attitude of like, Hey, don’t you wanna, don’t you wanna do this? Right? Help me. Like help us, help us help you. Right? Yeah. And

Ryan Winkle (19m 17s):
I have a great example of that’s happening right now. If you yeah,

David Longoria (19m 20s):
You talk about it.

Ryan Winkle (19m 21s):
Couple weeks ago we had gotten a notice from a couple of the businesses had called us up and said, Hey, I got this weird letter. Like what is it? It says something about my sign, I don’t know what it is. We’ve never had anything like this before. You know this is on Broadway, which is outside neighborhoods District Latino. I looked at it and, and Augie and we’re like, oh my gosh, this is, you’ve got a sign code violation. And I’m like, that’s so weird because they’re about to do construction on Broadway, which is truly about the same amount that was happening on Maine You know, during Light Rail construction and during Light Rail construction, they, they skipped all of the code violations cuz they knew it was just gonna be a hard time for these businesses, right?

Ryan Winkle (20m 2s):
Yeah. So we’re like, what is going on? And then so we called the landlord and we’re like, Hey, what’s going on with this sign code violation? And he is like, yeah, well You know, here’s the deal. When the city sends you these things, like I don’t have a choice but to send an eviction letter after they pass the timing at signed code. Cuz then it puts them out of their, their lease agreement. And then if I don’t do that, then the city comes to me to make me do something with it. So it’s like the bad consequence or the unintended consequence of the city trying to say like, Hey You know what? Like why don’t you freshen up your sign in their mind? I’m sure they’re just thinking like You know, like you can clean up your sign, clean up the front a little bit, make it look nice cuz we’re, we’re cleaning up around here.

Ryan Winkle (20m 42s):
But, but really the what happens is they’re, they’re gonna get kicked out. And so like we were lucky to be able to call this one this one landlord cuz we know him. But I was like, how many other landlords are out here that are just gonna just issue that issue, that warning piece. We don’t care. We’ll get another person.

David Longoria (20m 56s):
Yeah, totally.

Ryan Winkle (20m 58s):
And so we called the city and we’re like, hey, like because of this city initiated zoning, like I’m using my words carefully because I had to, I had to say because of your city issued zoning code, You know violation that you did all up and down Broadway. That’s what we found out. It was all up and down Broadway. Right? This is happening. And they’re like, what? That wasn’t us. No, it wasn’t us And. then I was like, okay fine. We did, we played this game before. Like you have an open data portal. You know you got a grant from Bloomberg. We can look exactly who initiated it right on there. And that says, you so You know I’m guaranteeing you, it’s you. And then they’re like all oh yeah, well no, that’s, that’s not what we meant to happen. And I’m like, no, I know you didn’t mean that to happen, but this is what we’re talking about before that the things you do can lead to displacement.

Ryan Winkle (21m 42s):
You know. Yeah. And so then the councilman got involved, Jen Duff, she’s actually been a part of Rail for a long time and actually put a lot of her campaign based on like what she has done through Rail. And she got like jumped into work and was like, yeah, yeah, we need to put a a stop on that time on that clock for those businesses. Like right now all of them You know all of them. So all of ’em got stopped as far as like the, the timing on the code complaint. And then now we’re starting to talk to ’em a little bit about like what is some sort of sign program like we did on Main Street during Light Rail look like You know because the light Rail, what happened is they got a like an overlay for entertainment. They got an overlay for art and like You know murals, they gotta overlay for sign things, You know all these different things that happened.

Ryan Winkle (22m 28s):
And I’m like, why isn’t that happening here? It’s the same exact thing you’re doing. We’re just not getting a light Rail, but we’re getting totally new construction. You know. Yeah. But that was one time when we had to jump in and be, and of course like the city, they hate it when we call cuz they’re like, dang it, now I gotta talk to them again about You know, like

David Longoria (22m 47s):
You know you’re doing something right for the neighborhood when the city that you’re in hates it when you call. No, seriously, that’s like a, that’s like a point of pride, right? I mean that’s almost like a ban

Ryan Winkle (22m 58s):
Of water. Yeah. Make in way. Yes. But also it’s like the idea of like attracting more flies with honey You know there’s other ways to work. That’s, I I try to just acknowledge that like they weren’t meaning it maliciously Sure. They were just trying to do a job because You know construction’s happening and they didn’t think about it. You know. Yeah.

David Longoria (23m 15s):
Well, in your work to not only sort of instill best practices and knowledge for community members and then also learning from your own lessons, right? And in terms of like what you did well and maybe what challenges you ran into and how you would do things differently, you have generated a lot of really great working knowledge in the neighborhoods and communities that you are, that you do the bulk of your work in. And I’m curious from your point of view, like how do you leverage that neighborhood knowledge, right? Do you do it, do you do it for wealth building, do you do it for ownership? What is the, what is the goal as far as rails concerned in terms of sort of giving these communities the resources that they need?

David Longoria (23m 59s):
Because you mentioned earlier it’s like you making money through real estate, right? I mean the same could be sp said for small businesses, like any entrepreneur could say that they want his or her or their business to get to a point where they can sell it and they can retire, right? So like what is, what is the, what is the end? What look like from Rail’s perspective?

Ryan Winkle (24m 20s):
Is there an end You know, like, I don’t know, there isn’t an end really, but I guess I think if we were, if let’s say we’re talking about how do we know success happened, right? Let’s go there. Sure. And so I’ll, I’ll use like a statement that Augie has kind of coined this, but he always says like, You know in 10 years and 10 years has really kind of like You know not a a real time, it’s just, it’s more of like a timeframe. It’s adequate. Right? Right. In 10 years, if we look at this whole area that we’ve been working in and the wealth has gone up or the medium has gone up and the demographics are the same or similar like You know it’s still very Latino, then we know we’ve done a good job because we’ve kept like Latino people there.

Ryan Winkle (25m 1s):
Their wealth has gone up, the immediate income has gone up and You know the neighborhoods look better, we know we did good, but in 10 years if the neighborhood demographics have changed and it’s like now You know white neighborhood or whatever else that might be populated in that area then and the wealth has gone up, that means we’ve imported that wealth and we’ve exported the people that were there. Right? So that’s like a, that would be a signal of success for us. I mean I don’t know if that would be like totally, but I mean it’s pretty obvious, right? I mean that means we just imported our, the wealth in some of the neighborhoods. We are currently seeing these houses that are being repaired and flipped, like that flip model and we call them and we say like, Hey, like any chance you’re gonna sell to somebody in the neighborhood or You know like what does that look like?

Ryan Winkle (25m 49s):
Is this, is this like a quick flip or what’s happening here? You know. And we’ve gotten Nick’s answers. One woman we had called about the building she was gonna sell and there was a business getting displaced out of it. And we said, well hey, like, like what would it take for us to buy the building? She’s like, I don’t know, like I’m actually not gonna sell. I’m like, okay, fine. Like a month later it was sold You know, and it was sold for like a pretty hefty like $800,000. And these, these buildings over here were put there a long, long time ago. So they’re not $800,000 buildings You. know what I mean? Yeah. But the timing for her was Right. You know and I, and I highly doubt it was her. I bet you it was her kids that were like, no man, like we gotta get this money for you. And then You know. Yeah. And then it got, it’s gonna be flipped again probably the minute that this construction’s done because that’s like the cycle of in in investment.

Ryan Winkle (26m 36s):
Right. And I bet you, I’m willing to bet that what will happen is it’ll be the mom who will sell it to the group of kids or the trust or something like that, right. For some amount of money. So then she come, pulls out the $500,000, right? Or whatever, then they are gonna sell it in a couple more years to some investment group for another set of money that they now pull out the million dollars. And now that person now has it for a while, right? Yeah. So the same family’s enriched twice without the community getting 1 cent of that, that outcome or that wealth You know. Yeah.

David Longoria (27m 10s):
You mentioned You know this recent sort of interaction that you had with the city and the even how, like you mentioned your local representative, Councilwoman Duff had to get involved and all that. And you’re very lucky because you have that relationship right with her and, and, and she’s been a big supporter and been involved with Rail for a long time. But for, for folks who maybe don’t have that and who want to get more involved and open with, with their local representatives, right? Who they often have to make that case with, right? In order to get what they need. How do they go about doing that? In your opinion? How do you sway a city council person or somebody to side with what they’re going along with?

Ryan Winkle (27m 55s):
Well, the best time is election years. I mean that’s, that’s mostly true, but not totally true. But let’s just say we’ll use City Council as an example, right? Because sure, there’s many other organizations that you have to fight with for things over time, right? But let’s just use them as an example. This this city, they really don’t like it when You know 20 neighbors come and complain about something. Because once that goes into like a public record, then it says, oh, 20 neighbors complained and what did the city do about it? And then if there’s not really a response that could be in now a news story, right? That could grow over time or something really bad could happen. You know, there’s many examples of that right now in, in mobile home parks, right?

Ryan Winkle (28m 35s):
Where people have said, man, that place is a dump. Like you need to do something about it for 30 years and now place caught on fire, people got hurt and now they’re forced to like evict everybody in weird things that happened, right? Yeah. That’s a good example of something like that that happened. I happened actually in West Mesa also, but in this case I used to pass out this little paper and it was like my, my kind of my suggestions of people what to do to be civically active. And I’m like, number one, get to know whoever your local representative is and like just kind of make, not like everyday contact, but enough So that when you call, they’re like, oh, it’s that person You know And, and I’m, and not in a mean way more like a hey letting You know that this happened or whatever, thanks for your help or could you help with anything on this You know in a more of a interactive way, right?

Ryan Winkle (29m 21s):
And then the second thing is you should like get to know your neighbors and like do things with them, not just to like do things meaning like have little events and things because that’s creating your, like your bond. So now when it comes to the time of talking to that person, you’re like, hey, me and seven of my neighbors all agree and we want this to happen in our neighborhood, how do we do it? And they’re more likely to help you with that, right? They’re really more likely to help you if you’re registered to vote and all your neighbors is are registered to vote. I always say to get involved in volunteering for something that’s in your neighborhood and something that you like, because a lot of people volunteer one day to feel good. Like they’ll go and there’s a group here called Feed My Starving Children or something like that. You know. And you go and for one day, like you put these brains in a bag and then it sends it off to Ethiopia and you’re like, yeah, I saved like You know 20,000 kids with these grains and You know or whatever and you feel good, but that’s not sustainable, right?

Ryan Winkle (30m 10s):
So like if you, if you spent your days like You know fixing the fences up and down your, your neighborhood, that that would be pretty sustainable for you. Not only that, if you were the person who did it, every single person in there be like, hey, that’s You know, that’s Ryan, the guy that fixes all the fences, like dude’s cool, like let’s help him out if he needs help You know what I mean? So it’s, it’s one of those things like you do these little actions, these little chance actions that will turn into something really big when you need it to happen, You know. That’s

David Longoria (30m 35s):
Awesome. So I sort of wanna move into like wrapping up this conversation a little bit, but before I do there’s, I wanna talk a little more about like Rail how it operates. You talked at length about what it does, but I wanna talk about like sort of the future, right? I mean is and and what other folks can take away from the work that you’ve done here locally over the last You know 10 years and counting. Is Rail a replicable structure? Is the core idea that it is place-based? Is that the secret sauce? Is there even secret sauce? I mean how can rails pop up in important communities all around the country?

Ryan Winkle (31m 19s):
One of our ideas I guess since, since I took, kind of took over as executive director is that we wanted to be decentralized in a way that people could, that are working with us can make decisions without necessarily having to always like report back or call the boss You know I wanted that and part of that took some pretty deep culturing of anyone that got involved with us, right? So when, when the people get involved, we make sure they go through a whole like onboarding process and they quote like quote unquote culturing of our ways, right? And our ways, our culturing really is like the do it for the neighborhood model, right? Like we do a lot about, like everything you do, it’s for the neighborhood.

Ryan Winkle (32m 2s):
Every relationship you have, you have to remember it’s an important relationship and relationships can be lost like that. So you have to remember, we’re in a relationship here, You know and then we usually make them sign something that’s a, that’s You know the like an equitable engagement contract with us and them and then the neighborhood they’re working with because they have to understand that everything that happens really belongs to the neighborhood. Even include anything that you’re taking. Like if I’m like, Hey I Magna survey, everybody cool, that’s great. A lot of people do that. But what happens most of the time is that that they leave, they survey, no one ever knows what happened. That surveyor, whatever information was taken out and now it’s just gone somewhere and then 200 more people do that and the neighbor’s like Dang I’m just getting tired of being surveyed for nothing.

Ryan Winkle (32m 45s):
So then we usually require everyone to pay people that work in the neighborhood if you’re gonna survey them, all these little things that are saying like you are responsible to the people in that neighborhood, right? And So, that being said, we are setting up multiple kind of decentralized versions of ourselves. Even like within like the community organizer Sul right now. He kind of understands the model and now instead of coming to GIE or me all the time they go to Sul, right? Yeah. So eventually what I want is like now Sul should have like a partner or a friend there that is also getting paid work in the neighborhood and now it’s almost like the little south south side Saul movement is working over there. They’re doing their things. I’m over in La Victoria, You know LA Victoria, Anna from LA Victoria now is doing her thing.

Ryan Winkle (33m 28s):
You know, we You know there’s all this motion happening where we’re not in control of it all. Neighborhood built, neighborhood driven. But we are there to say hey, like if you need somebody to call the city or write a letter, You know in a mass sort of way we’re here. So yes. So I think we are slowly becoming replicable Gie and I and some of the other like people that work more in the group of us, we talk about the decentralized model and what that means. And so like am, am I the boss? I don’t know. Am I like, is Gie the boss? You know. I mean sometimes Emily You know she’s our main small business person, Emily ve and sometimes she’s very much the boss cuz I’m like, people say what’s happened with this small business? I’m like, I don’t know, I gotta talk to Emily about it.

Ryan Winkle (34m 10s):
You know. Cuz I know kind of mostly what’s happening, but there’s some things that are happening that she’s controlling You know. I mean that’s a great thing cuz that also means like let’s say I go away for some reason or You know another covid comes and I’m more casualty of it. Oh

David Longoria (34m 24s):
My God, would you stop it? You stop that talk right now. Continue, stop

Ryan Winkle (34m 30s):
That. Rail has to continue. You know, or this idea has to continue, whether it’s Rail or not You know

David Longoria (34m 35s):
You mentioned being the boss or not. How do you juggle being the leader of an organization like Rail and staying connected? Like you are incredibly connected. You are all over the place and you have a family other than not sleeping at all, I’m convinced you get maybe an hour of sleep a night, but in all reality, like how do you, how do you juggle all of it? Like what is, what is your, what is your secret?

Ryan Winkle (35m 3s):
My wife often asks me this because I think You know any, anyone that has You know as significant others or You know partners in that are along with you in the game and they have, they don’t work like work in this kind of work. They definitely are probably often, I mean I I’m sure Selena all times is like, dude again, like, don’t you have hours? Like you’re nine to five? Right? Or like You know, like there’s often oftentimes this Sunday was one of them when You know one of the people that we had doing something couldn’t make it. So I had to go, right? Yeah. I was there for a couple hours and my wife’s like, seriously on a Sunday? Like you literally worked at this for almost 10 something years now. Like, can you take Sundays You know? And I’m like, yes, but responsible to the neighborhood.

Ryan Winkle (35m 44s):
Remember that You know not only that like for someone like my wife or Augie’s or any, any of other people’s wives or husbands that are into this one day, something will happen and those people will be there for you. I guarantee you it’s already happened many times in my life.

David Longoria (36m 2s):
Yeah, for sure. I mean the, the bridges that you build literally end up connecting you to the people who will then come and meet you where you are at when, when you least expect it and perhaps when you need it the most. So that’s really cool actually You know, that’s never the motivation I suppose, but it certainly is a really, I guess for lack of a better word, a really blessed sort of perk of the work You know what I mean? It’s kind of cool.

Ryan Winkle (36m 36s):
I mean plus like think about it, that’s happening between all these people too. So now You know we got David Martinez, our one of the mural guys working with Scarlet, they didn’t know each other before and Saul building a fence in front of her house when someone walked into their, their grandmother’s house like this. These are people who didn’t know each other before. I mean I’m sure they saw each other in some way, but they didn’t like interact You know. Well

David Longoria (36m 57s):
You very ominously mentioned like You know what happens when you’re gone, right? And you’re never going anywhere first of all. So don’t even entertain that notion. But how can people dedicate it to this work, carry it on? How does one generation pass it on to another and lend to it its own vibe, its own flavor, its own character if you will. Even if even if youre still around and you will be

Ryan Winkle (37m 26s):
Yeah, yeah. I’m not, how

David Longoria (37m 27s):
Do you, how do you step back and guide the work forward?

Ryan Winkle (37m 32s):
So I mean right now we have that new operations administrator. We just, we had Evelyn start last year. You know we actually have three organizers now instead of the just one of us. It’s relieving Augie and I and Emily who are really the kind of three main people originally over time to do more things, right? And so as that’s happened, we’ve worked hard to, number one, I’m a big firm believer in paying people, pay people, pay ’em on time, You know what I mean? Like because, and I know that’s, and in the nonprofit world, the amount of money doesn’t matter as much as like someone feeling very satisfied and you trying to pay them what they’re worth. If you can, if you can.

Ryan Winkle (38m 13s):
Secondly, I try to put my, all the people that are involved with us in a leadership position where I’m like, I like you. Tell me what you think we should do. If that’s, if it’s wrong, we, we’ll, we’ll I’ll, I’ll say no You know what I mean? But like I want you to help me figure this out cuz a lot of times I’m, I want them to be trained so I want 20 other mes or or other IESs or Emily’s or Evelyn’s or running around doing things You know, like You know remember was that movie Fight Club right when the dude came back and he’s like, what are you guys doing? Like they told us not to tell you. And he is like, but I started this And then I go. He’s like, I know exactly. They told us not to tell you You know. Like I think of it like that where it’s, we gotta do something.

Ryan Winkle (38m 54s):
It has to be You know radical enough to create friction and create change, but also good enough where people feel great doing it and they wanna continue doing it and they wanna be by your side. Even if it’s like we in the interview process, this was awesome. Some guy was like, You know what? Like that’s like a pretty steep pay cut. But this is so cool. I am willing to take that pay cut You. know what I mean? Yeah. Because I, I need to get connected again. You know And I was like wow, that’s a good compliment to us Thank. you You know.

David Longoria (39m 23s):
That’s really awesome. Well, Ryan Winkle, I cannot Thank you enough for this conversation and for the time and all the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much for coming on the The Podcast and talking to me and fielding these questions and dropping some knowledge

Ryan Winkle (39m 42s):
And thanks Impact. I mean You know when I heard you were coming to Arizona, man, I was excited because that’s, it’s legitimately where a lot of us first went was that Revolution and got our very first taste and this kind of working. We actually got the assignment from Terry and they said, everyone Ryan, you’re community organizing gie, you’re this David, you’re that and you’re this. When we come back, everyone needs to take those three ideas and we’re gonna put at least one of those into motion right when we get back. And then that’s what we did after everything like that. And that kind of kicked it all off.

David Longoria (40m 11s):
That’s awesome. Well thanks so much Ryan. I really appreciate this.

Ryan Winkle (40m 15s):
Thank you, David, and Thank you.

David Longoria (40m 18s):
Yeah. Thank you for listening to the Mpact Podcast. I’m David Longoria.