Phillips sits astride Highway 41, about a mile North of it's three way intersection with Highway 17 N. Once an isolated country village, it's now being integrated (with considerable stress) into East Cooper's suburban margins.  Despite that, the community is strong, full of people with long entertwined family history and has a an active 501c3 Community Association which has been working for the past eight years to strengthen and preserve Phillips and shape it towards a becoming a positive, racially inclusive community. Our project beings President Obama's "Summer of Service" with a project which interprets health broadly, but validly. We, joining members of the Phillips community, will help advance two already established projects supported by the community association. We'll meet at the East Cooper Community Outreach (ECCO) parking lot (1145 Six Mile Rd, Mt Pleasant, SC 29466, Across Six Mile Road from Laing School and behind Goodwill) at 8 am and caravan out to Phillips. Participants should sign up to participate in the event online, to help with meal planning and supplies. ECCO is also accessable by public transit on the CARTA #40 bus, see Saturday schedule. ECCO has an established connection with the Phillips Community, assiting families and providing health and clinic services. It also benefits from the support of members of the Phillips Community as well. Charity flows both ways between nonprofit and community. 
Image, Left, Bus Stop location. We'll help clear a small plot of land on Highway 41 purchasec by the community association where children wait for the school bus and install a simple wooden bench. This will help keep children away from the busy road and give parents and grandparents a place to wait for their children's return from school at the end of the day. Obvously a safter place to wait for the school bus, is better for children and promotes their health. Highway 41 has become an exceptionally dangerious, high speed road. over the years. We'll also be talking to CARTA about raising community awareness that the Long Point Flex Bus can pick up adults for connection to the entire CARTA system at this location and distributing literature that day on that service. Improved transit access for the community makes health care more accessabe. We'll explore providing information on the Tel-A-Ride service CARTA operates for the disabled. Update, June 17- CARTA has informed us that Flex Bus service will be available at this stop. We'll have route maps and schedules to distribute the day of the event. See the CARTA bus shedule for the East Cooper Flex bus. The map's not assurate, but the flex bus will serve the stop on Highway 41, though it won't go into Phillips on the N.E. Side of the Highway.  Image, Right, View of the community activity field from the planned picnic area.
The day's big project will be cleaning up the community activity field at the site the Association has purchased for a community center. We'll form a long line and clear out the sticks and trash on the lot and either grind it to mulch of pile it for burning later. Please bring gloves and wheelbarrows if you have them. We hope to have the field mowed after we're done.  Image, Left, the Activity Field.
In the wooded area at the back of the field, we'll claer out underbrush to create a shaded picnic area which will have a nice open view of the field. Seing blades, gas powered string trimmers, lopping shears and manual hedge trimmers will be useful for this work. Members of the Phillips Community will be bringing their chain saws, but they'll need help pulling the underbrush out into the field to be mulched or burned. If time and money permit, we'll purchase and assembly two picnic tables for the area. A community activity site with an athletic field and picnic area which can later grow into a community center will provide a place for exercise and recreation within the Phillips community, promoting health. When the center is constructed, it will be a place for health education and public health screenings for diseases such as breast cancer and diabetes, which SC has at levels far above the national norm. To celebrate the end of work, members of the Phillips Community will hold a picnic under the trees about 12 noon. They plan to bar-b-que chicken and ribs, which they'll serve with beans and slaw. I've committed to provide some Gazpatcho in an attempt to advance the day's healthcare theme. We'll have plenty of bottled water to help everyone deal wth the heat. Update- Ed Faircloth will be shooting video during the project to include in a documentary about the Charleston service projects that day. This video will be uploaded onYouTube and sent to the National OFA organization and White House. Ed Produced the wonderful Charleton Health Care Story Video recently sent to the Obama administration for use in the national health care effort. Everyone will be invited back on August 15 for the community's annual back to school picnic, where the kids get their new school supplies and the community celebrates the beginning of a new year of community activity, which may include games on their bright, sunny field next to picnics under the trees.  Near the community center area, a causeway crosses the marsh until it arrives as a small creek. An old bridge, erected on piers made of wooden cribbing packed with Oyster shells and rubble crosses the creek.
A few years ago, developers of the adjacent suburb used this bridge to bring heavy equipment to their work site, ripping up the decking on the bridge, a popular fishing location. This put the burden of construction traffic on the residents of Phillips, while sparing the people in the new community the noise and inconvenience of trucks and construction equipment. When construction was done, they tore out a portion of the causeway on the opposite side of the creek, severing what could have been a beautiful and mutually rewarding connection between the two communities. They also left holes and deep ruts in the causeway. The historic Phillips bridge, with it's unusual support system, is now a "bridge to nowhere." It's rutted approach and shattered deck leads to a pit in the marsh on the opposite side. It is a monument to the fear and racial divisions which hold our community back and create divisions that enable a society to accept living in a state where a quarter of its people don't have access to healthcare. The Phillips Bridge to nowhere, symbolizes the broken connections in South Carolina's heart and mind which leave her people less happy, less well and less properous than they could be. It is a dead end where we all lose something.  When we're bolting together picnic tables and clearing brush on June 27th., we won't just be making sure the residents of Phillips get closer to a little more exercise and a safer wait for the school bus, we'll be building a bridge. It will go from a group of strangers who meet in the morning to a group of friends enjoying bar-b-que under the trees for lunch.
It's a tiny effort to solve a small part of an enourmous problem, to heal not just the sicnesses organzations like ECCO treat at clinics, but the illness which has made our state sick. We'll be operating not with a scaple, but with a swing blade. More Informatio n on this Project - Register for this event on the Organizing for America Website.
- More images from the Phillips Community and larger versions of the images in this article from Flikr
- Talk to the guy who is going to do something useful, owns a pickup truck and knows how to run a chain saw. Richard Habersham, of the Phillips Community Assn. (843) 819-4635. Richard is keeping track of the tools, supplies and skills we have to get the job done Saturday. He's also helping coordinate the Picnic, but no work, no eat. Richard is wearing the stripped shirt in the images in this blog post.
- Registration, Communication and Press Issues- Contact William Hamilton about registration and communication issues.
- President Obama talked about having safe places for children to play within communities as part of his overall plan for health care for children. http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/FactSheetChildAdvocacy.pdf
Stuff We Need In addition to your time, we need some things to make this work. - Everyone should bring a pair of gloves, boots or closed toed shoes and make sure they hydrate generously before work starts. We'll have water on site, but you should water up before you get there.
- Two picnic tables like the type illustrated above, or some fundraising ideas to come up with a quick $200 to pay for them.
- A mulcher or chipper unit capable of grinding up small branches.
- A larger garden mower or tractor to mow the field.
- A generator to briefly operate some power tools. (Don't panic, we'll just move the carpentry to someone's yard if that doesn't show up).
- Swing blades, gas powered string trimmers, lopping shears and bow saws. (Members of the Phillips Community will bring their chain saws and the skill to use them. A bunch of city liberals running around with chain saws was a lot more 'yes we can' than the people at Phillips were prepared to be "change we can believe in."
- Some wheel barrows to collect sticks and trash.
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Updated, June 17- On Saturday, June 27th, President Obama is inviting you to use a swing blade to suture up some of the divisions which make South Carolina sicker and weaker than it should be.
Image, Left, Google Earch View of Phillips Community.Image, Right, Creek along W. Side of Phillips. 
