More than a Feeling: How the Red Jacket of City Year Adopts and Transfuses its Wearer and Viewer with the City Year Culture, and how Gregory Bem is Deserving of the Jacket, and how he must confess that the City Year Jacket is for Him
Every culture has different symbols that represent the values, procedures, and operations from each branch of the culture. Some cultures are spiritual, some are governmental; some are bureaucratic, while some lack overarching structure. As a long-running, well-established non-profit organization located in a diverse collection of urban hubs throughout the United States of America, City Year has developed a culture of its own, and with its culture comes a set visual symbols that are prophetic, empowering, and noticeable by both members of City Year and members of the society in which City Year finds its home. Some of these cultural symbols, like the City Year logo, reflect the history of City Year’s formation, the founding principles, values and ideals of City Year’s existence, the year-long life of City Year’s presence in the cities, and the diverse group of people involved under City Year, who are celebrating through participation. For example, the font of the logo is derived from the Civilian Conservation Corps, who as a precursor to City Year led the service movement in the United States of America during the 1930s; the logo has circles that “symbolize community and equality” (Idealist Handbook, pg. 25) and represent the “power circle” concept, which is a way for City Year Corps Members do communicate on an inclusive basis. There are many pieces of this powerful and effective logo, which all perform their individual, visual parts to comprise a “whole” that can be received by City Year and outside members of greater city communities with an understanding of all associative benefits that City Year provides for the society. Like the logo, another manifestation of the City Year experience is through uniform, which each and every member is required to where while they serve under City Year[1]; this uniform is as complex as its logo, if not more so. There are many parts of the uniform: the boots that are worn on each City Year Corps Member’s working feet, provided by the company Timberland, which promotes an awareness between non-profit work and corporate sponsorship; the khaki pants, which are to be pressed and starched for professionalism, and the variety of City Year shirts, which also show sponsors, the logo, and color coordination amongst the Corps Members. But there is nothing greater in all of the City Year uniform, and the entirety of the culture for that matter, than City Year’s red jacket. The red jacket is a masterful symbol. It is worn by each member of the Corps, as well as stakeholders of City Year, and holds in each of its fibers the strokes of energy, effort, and service that City Year has given, is giving, and has the potential to give. The red jacket has many layers of meaning that make it up as an effective symbol, as a representation of the City Year culture. Red is love, courage, sacrifice, and power. It has many meanings across many cultures, but most importantly it is like the inner red circle of the City Year logo, which is designed to portray energy, idealism, and warmth. The red jacket is the primary component of an attire that can truly and utterly be identified from a distance, with the red jacket’s bright hues and strong reflective qualities. The red jacket is a jacket, which means the red jacket covers the entire upper torso of the working, servicing body that wears the red jacket. But as a symbol the red jacket has social significance too: the red jacket is a symbol of unity. With every City Year member wearing the red jacket, the red jacket demonstrates cooperation, coordination, and community; the red jacket represents a joint effort to bring forward the ideas of the organization; the red jacket in unison with each and every other red jacket is a powerful sight indeed! It brings that ideals of City Year—spirit, discipline, purpose, pride, and power—into fruition. It is striking but balanced; attractive but sturdy and functional. The red jacket is an extension of our humanity and our humanistic, functional prowess that can be attributed allegorically, metaphysically to our body parts that warm, bake if you will, under the jacket’s gentle caress—from the weight on our soldiers to the beating heart of love in our chests to the directional control of our necks—the red jacket serves us better so that we may serve the communities we work in better and serves the communities we work in as a presence that may help us serve better. The red jacket is like the apple, which lingers on the end of the apple tree’s twig in September, waiting to be plucked, but always, always, always a smaller unit in a larger picture, a picture of other apples on their respective twigs, stems atwitter, the branch aging healthily, the sky blue in the distance, the human being and animals coming to watch the ripened fruit and pick it up knowing the fruit’s purposes to flavor the mouth and fill the belly. The red jacket is like this.[2]
So you may be wondering why I want to wear the red jacket. You may be, in your curiosity, intrigued as to how I relate to such a symbol. Well, the potential is quite high that I may get to don the red jacket in the near future as a reward for my concentrated work-shopping and the vast learning procedures I have engaged in and processed since joining City Year. The honor is undeniable. To wear the City Year jacket means to be part of something greater than the self; the red jacket is indeed a token of community, togetherness, and Values[3], but to be more specific it is a recognizable cause that will allow me to better identify myself with those I have the pleasure of serving with, no matter how much along the surface such identity is through uniform relationships, and no matter how far deep the symbolism stretches, like a rabbit hole going on and on, with surprises waiting around every bend, but the concept of the rabbit hole being unbroken, being true as a concept, as an idea, to whatever depths may be discovered. And on the inverse of the equation, the jacket becomes important because people can lean on me for support, see me as someone in their shoes, or moccasins that can demonstrate we all come from our own lives, moving along wonderfully at our own pace, as we are individuals, and we are moving in directions that others may gain from. When I imagine myself putting on the red jacket zipping up for the first time, I imagine myself becoming a new being, a being had energies necessary to change the world, but needed the capstone to seal the deal; the red jacket completes the multi-component uniform, and thus completes the symbolism of a culture that can be installed within the neighborhoods, streets, blocks, and people we are working with. And when I see a facet of the society recognize me for who I am from a distance or from up close, for the first time or the thousandth, I will know that I am receiving such joy for the greater group as a whole as well, which will only further thrust me into the most important and complex situations that an educator, a service-leader, may face. For the jacket will turn its wearer into a leader, into a believer of the self. For what is a king or queen without a crown? For what is a policeman without his sky-blue top, or an astronaut without his helmet? Like City Year, these people all have important, symbolic finales to their uniforms that will complete them and allow them, and everyone else, to be aware of their role, their presence within the world. I look forward to the moment when I will put on the red jacket and will feel the completion begin to take place and assure me that, even if the service year is going in a chaotic direction, a direction I cannot trust, I will be able to have faith in the power of the red jacket.
[1] While the uniform is required to be worn during all City Year hours under City Year’s policies, wearing the uniform is seen as an honorable, respectable privilege that only serves to supplement the greater good that City Year is performing. Among City Year’s goals during the Basic Training Academy portion of a Corps Member’s service year is to ensure a well-rounded, holistic view of the uniform and its many cultural functions.
[2] Please, though, dear reader, understand that this metaphoric escapade is not to demean or reduce the value of the red jacket in the City Year organization; it is a poetic statement serving to better bring the values of the red jacket into view, as we humans can perhaps better relate to an idealistic visage than to the abstract socio-cultural banter of a college-educated intellectual.
[3] A set of overarching Values (capital “v” intended) which includes the following mantra-chant: spirit, discipline, purpose, and pride—all qualities of a program that will lead each member and those that each member interacts with to future success and expansive opportunity. To have “spirit” within City Year means that one is in sync with the energy that can be harnessed to propel the individual into a period of service; to have discipline means that one is able to put aside obstacles and remain true to one’s training and one’s directional standards; to have “purpose” means that one is aware of the problems facing the society—including but not limited to social equality/inequality, the issue of rights between the oppressed and the privileged; and the uneducated masses that have been left in the darkness of ignorance and left without any knowledge of how to get out of the darkness; and to have “pride,” which at its most rudimentary and primal form means a liking and sense of ownership over one’s actions, or one’s group actions (group being the greater City Year group, the city that one is serving in, or the smaller group of one’s school).
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