Community Organizing

Yesterday, as a sort of social experiment, I posed the question “When you see the term Community Organizing/Organizer, what do you think?” and got responses from the fairly predictable hippy/communist/doesn’t like to shower to references to Obama to really great descriptions like “walking the talk” “people from all community sectors working together for a common vision/mission” and “a good way to stay young”. I had only asked out of idle curiosity, but the answers I got definitely got me thinking. Community Organizing has as many definitions as there are organizers. What works with one city or block or group will not work with another. I am definitely starting to learn that here at Crossroads Urban Center. There are different tactics to working with the Coalition of Religious Communities than there are with the Homeless Opportunities and Rights Network or the Anti-Hunger Action Committee. All of the groups work for social justice and work out of the same building, but where CORC organizes religious groups to lobby their legislators all over the state on economic justice issues like regulating the payday lending and recruits mostly from churches or involvement fairs, AHAC and HORN work more with the food pantry clients and the homeless population in Salt Lake City on justice issues such as camping ordinances or food stamp accessibility on a more local level.

But when I was reading a book on community organizing the other week and talking to my friend who works at a church and was recruiting volunteers to teach Sunday School, it occurred to me that working at a church and being a community organizer have a lot in common: both have to constantly recruit new members and then cultivate those members into more active volunteers, both generally have to provide cookies and coffee at any events they host, both have members who will be rather cantankerous if said meetings run over time and can do things like install a clock within eyesight of the pulpit (I actually heard of this happening at a church. Ha!) and have to work toward making their community better, whether by promoting Jesus, justice, or both!

More general updates, I am making more friends here and even had some over for chicken tortilla soup the other day, I found out my dog that we’ve had since I was in elementary school got put to sleep, which made for a rough weekend, I went to a concert by the very cool Emma’s Revolution, I found out the grant my coworker and I worked on went through and we will get financial contributions toward our efforts to raise compassion for undocumented workers in Utah, and the holiday season is looming ever closer and, while stressful, will be positively delightful without finals! Currently, I am waiting on tenterhooks to read the final installment in the Inheritance Cycle, what addictive books!

 

Busyness

My high school choir director always warned us in dramatic, foreboding tones about the dangers of getting too caught up in busyness that goes nowhere, whether in musical passages that he wanted us to make less funereal or in our outside-of-choir lives. And I have to say, I think I stumbled into a job that keeps me quite busy, but it all goes somewhere.

For instance, this past weekend, I was at a United Methodist Women annual meeting and met some of the most incredible women. Granted, more than one of them wanted to set me up with their grandsons, but that’s just semantics. I was blown away at how long they had dedicated themselves to ministering with low income and marginalized populations, whether it was making prayer shawls or UMCOR buckets or volunteering at Crossroads Urban Center or any number of causes they dedicated themselves to from the environment to domestic violence to undocumented workers. I very much want to be like these ladies when I grow up! I confess before I left I was sort of afraid it would be a few days of listening to talk about bunions or dentures but that was most certainly not the case! Though I did rather feel like I was about twelve years old when they would keep talking about “the young people” which did make me giggle!

I also had my first experience preaching. Before, it had been a general spiel where I outlined what the US-2 program is and what Crossroads is and what all I was doing. In the one on Sunday, I used Bible verses and told more of my personal decision-making process which led to being a US-2. I was horribly nervous, but I think it went well overall. I did not perpetrate any of my personal pet peeves for public speaking/sermon-making like apologizing for saying what you are about to say, going on for far too long with no real reason, telling irrelevant stories, shouting about how angry God is at people for doing something, or grinning while talking about a serious topic. Not to mention, people seemed to like what I had to say, though of course I have a long way to go before I become a smooth public speaker. The most surprising thing, (other than meeting a man who went to the exact same elementary school I did) was talking to a girl my age afterwards who told me I made her feel guilty because I was doing all this mission work and she was not. That was definitely not my point! But we had a good conversation about all of it so it all ended up right. Still can’t believe it, though.

Going to advocacy staff meeting today at Crossroads really made me feel like I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of city politics here in Salt Lake City. I didn’t know three fourths of what they were talking about, and the things I did recognize, I didn’t know all that much about. So I really need to get to reading up on local issues not only so these meetings make sense, but so I can know who to talk to on what issues and how they might respond. Thankfully, I have a lot of help with that here, I just need to take advantage of it. I am also taking advantage of living in a larger city because tomorrow, I am going to the City Library to hear Kathy Reichs (the lady who wrote Bones!) and this weekend, I am going to the Scottish Ceilidh at the Presbyterian Church near where I live. I am extremely excited about both of these events. I mean what could be cooler than forensic anthropology and tartan in the same week, no less!

 

Simplicity

I am currently struggling to write a sermon to deliver this coming Sunday about Risk Taking Mission and Service. I have the lectionary passage and the topic and my previous spiel about myself and the US-2 program to start with. Beyond that, I haven’t the foggiest idea about what to say. On the plus side, I quite like both of the lectionary passages (1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 and Matthew 22: 34-46, in case you were wondering) so I think I can work those in and have it make sense. I am just struggling with the fact that I am going to preach. To actual people. About Risk Taking Mission and Service. In less than a week.

Alright, I got the nervousness out for now. Now on to what I was actually going to talk about in this blog. Although it does sort of tie in, I suppose. I’ve started to realize that a lot of issues that seem extremely convoluted do not necessarily need to be. For instance, housing and homelessness. If governments have such a problem with homeless people sleeping in the parks, then how come they don’t provide viable alternatives to prevent the sort of desperation that leads to sleeping on park benches? If they want everyone to be gainfully employed, how come they support policies that ship jobs overseas and leave fewer opportunities for those seeking jobs? Maybe I am naive and do not know the ways of the world and maybe my political knowledge comes from watching Law and Order, but I do think these questions need to be asked until they are answered with sustainable action and homelessness is not just invisible but solved.

In addition, religion is another that is needlessly complicated. As the lectionary passage for this Sunday states, “Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” That is what Jesus tells us to do. Two sentences. All of the hundreds of commandments and books of law compressed into two almost terrifyingly simple sentences. So all we can do is…do. Go forth and love.

Well I covered politics and religion. Enough controversy for today. This has been a busy week or so and will continue to be busy until noonish Sunday when church is over. I went to my cousin’s wonderful wedding this past weekend in Ohio and had a marvelous time hanging out with my family and enjoying landscape that is not remotely desert-esque. I also worked the food pantry Monday morning and have been planning the monthly Coalition of Religious Communities meeting this Thursday. I am also going to the Rocky Mountain Annual Meeting of the United Methodist Women this weekend in Grand Junction, CO, which I think will be great. I just kind of hope that I won’t be the only under-thirty person there. We will just have to see. Well, I have meeting to get to now, so I will leave this here and continue my montage next week.

 

Learning Experiences

Since moving to Salt Lake City and coming to work at Crossroads, I have had more that one learning experience. Hopefully, I actually learn lessons from these experiences and don’t just file them away in the old brain box for future reference but never actually, you know, use them.

One example would be the couple of public speaking experiences I have done here. The first, I made exactly three notes on the church bulletin, did not practice, and gave a fairly mediocre talk during which I know I forgot at least three things to mention. The second talk I gave, I prepared a reasonably thorough outline of what I was going to say, ran through the talk before going, did not forget anything of note, and they laughed at my jokes and fed me lasagna. All in all, a successful outing.

Another learning experience would have to be the fairly in-depth tour my supervisor gave me of Salt Lake City last week. Everything I had heard of Salt Lake City before coming here tended to be along the lines of “it’s clean, the people are nice, the mountains are gorgeous, and there sure are a lot of Mormons out there.” Nothing to really indicate high levels of poverty. But I saw what are called inner courts: tiny streets cut into the center of the large city blocks that hold more houses than you could possibly imagine in these narrow strips of concrete than can barely hold one car at a time, much less two. As my supervisor said, you have to feel bad for pizza delivery guys who have to try and find these places. So I suppose I learned that poverty is definitely a reality in Salt Lake City, if perhaps a better-hidden one than in the Deep South.

I’m also learning a little bit as I go along about Community Organizing.  And yes, I am currently reading a book about it, but I am also attending meetings and listening and learning quite  lot of overlapping advice like :it’s all about relationships. Things that seem like no-brainers but that are absolutely crucial. As the guy who wrote the book I’m reading about it (Building Powerful Community Organizations by Michael Jacoby Brown for those curious enough to check it out) said, we are not selling toothpaste. To make an impact, face to face contact makes a much bigger and more lasting impression than fliers or even skywriting ever will (though I do wonder about the skywriting…). That is also something I definitely need to remember because I must say, emails are a lot quicker and easier than actually talking to people. But emails are also quicker and easier to delete.

Well, this is some of what I have learned so far and hopefully some of it will stick!

 

Meetings and Meeting People

Quite a lot of what I have done since I came here a month ago has been going to meetings where I have met people and meeting people with whom I later have meetings. Terribly confusing, I know, but that is the way I feel quite honestly. Especially with emailing people and then meeting them face to face so that I sort of know who they are, but have no idea what they look like. Or meeting a whole horde of people like at our Poverty Summit this past Saturday and then meeting them later and having them remember who I am while I vaguely nod along and, if I am lucky, get a sudden burst of memory and know who I am talking to. Otherwise, I tend to just keep nodding along vaguely and attempt to catalog their name and details to help me remember them, like whether or not they have bangs or a buzz cut or something silly like that. Thankfully, since I have been here a month, I tend to remember the names of at least two or three people at each meeting I go to, which makes learning the names of everyone else much more manageable.

On the whole, I kind of enjoy going to meetings as a chance to get out of the office and go to new and exciting buildings like The North Admin Tower (ha) and get out of the standard routine that generally involves typing emails to people, staring wistfully at the postcards on my bulletin board of London and/or the Van Gogh calendar, checking email, calling people to get them to come to our meetings or looking up some abbreviation that I have not come across before (DWS, ABAWD, SUA, TANF, UAH and yes, those are all real abbreviations used in the space of one meeting. This is why I look things up!). It’s also good to know who I have been emailing with. I can’t help but remember when I was waiting to be interviewed during Interview and Discernment Days for US-2 and overheard two very happy women exclaim “My email buddy! So good to finally meet you in person! How long have we been in contact, three years?” I would feel terrible if I emailed someone that frequently and never met them the whole time I was a US-2. I also end up learning much more than I thought I would going to meetings since everyone always portrays meetings as a horrific waste of time and dreadfully boring. So far, the ratio of meetings where I have thought “Oh my gosh, get me out of here” to “Huh, I never knew that. This is kind of interesting” has been pleasantly small. Granted, one of those meetings was at about 1 in the afternoon and I had not had lunch yet, so I think I can be forgiven for being a bit impatient during that one.

Anyways, it’s hard to believe I have actually been here in Salt Lake City and at Crossroads for a little over a month! But I must say, it’s a relief to have the first month behind me so that I feel a little less clueless. On the flip side, the honeymoon is over and things are starting to gear up with preparations for the Thanksgiving Turkey giveaway, speaking at churches, the legislative interim session, and ever more meetings on the docket for the coming weeks.

 

Taking Initiative

Taking initiative is one of those phrases that insinuates itself everywhere. For instance, yesterday, I was getting coffee with a local pastor who informed me that, if I took the initiative, I could be as involved there as I wanted…and then proceeded to sign me up to speak at the service on October 23 about Risk Taking Mission and Service. He also said that if I wanted to, during my time here, I could learn how to preach, which I admit would be a good skill to have (though I’m not sure when I’d put it into practice), but the thought of it kind of makes me nervous. I mean, who am I to get up in front of people and talk about faith journeys and Three Things You Can Do This Week To Be A Better Person? But I suppose I have enough initiative to try anything once.

Also, a big part of being in a new place and not knowing a soul is taking initiative to meet people and make friends. Though sometimes, I admit, the meeting people does not lead to friendship, as in the case of the interesting fellow known affectionately as The Wizard across from me at the coffee shop reading Tarot Cards for people. Always good to add some interest to an otherwise bland internet-mooching session! I also admit a little bit of jealousy at times for those of my fellow US-2s living or working with other people their age. But when that happens or when it feels particularly quiet in my apartment (or when I just have to watch the new episode of Glee!), that is when I head to the coffee shop around the corner and people watch. It may or may not have gotten to the point where I walk in and they ask “iced coffee with skim milk and splenda?” and I sheepishly nod yes. Somehow, even when I move two thirds of the way across the country, I am still predictable!

Anyways, work is going well. I’m feeling more and more like I might have a vague clue as to what is going on and what I am doing here, which, all in all, is a good thing. I like the time I get working in the pantry and meeting people and doing a little bit to help them. The variety of attitudes I get (sometimes within about 5 minutes) is astounding. There are some who come in kind of shellshocked because they’ve never gotten food from a food pantry before and the whole process is daunting, there are the old hats who have been coming to Crossroads for years and give the information we need to get them the food they need and are in and out in about 30 seconds, there are the women who come in with about ten kids, which usually ends with me being kind of shellshocked, especially in the few cases where they are still in the process of learning English, so we have to talk over the kids while trying to understand each other and be understood to get food and diapers lined up for them. Phew! Thankfully, I have not encountered too many angry people yet, but there have been one or two who have reached their quota for services or who forgot or don’t have identification or stuff like that to get food or what-have-you and so they leave rather cranky, which does make me feel bad, but policies are in place for a reason and there is only so much we can do with the resources we have. I just try to focus on the people we are able to help and that I am helping do concrete things like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked (thankfully I have not encountered any naked people, but we do have a thrift store that gives away many more clothes and household items than it sells and we can give out vouchers for that in the pantry).

I also went a couple of times to the State Capitol this week to sit in on Committee meetings about the Lake Powell Pipeline, which is something that we at Crossroads are concerned about, as funding for that might result in raised food taxes and less funding for other things like education and health and human services. I will probably be writing about that more later, but I just wanted to say that I was surprised at how…well…human the legislators were. There was one asleep, one obviously talking on his phone (but he covered it up with his hands, so it was ok…psh…), one with a bolo tie, and at least three texting. Gosh. I was also warned that on Valentines Day, they all wear red or pink ties and roll out a piano and break into such tunes as “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”, which, I will say, is not my favorite song of all time…

Well, this weekend, I am taking a roadtrip to Price, UT with my coworker to speak at a church there. Wish me luck on that and on taking the initiative!

 

Interfaith, Ecumenical and All that Jazz

In the last week, I have attended two Coalition of Religious Communities meetings, an Interfaith Roundtable lunch meeting and…er…well it’s been a lot of meetings. But it has been a great experience getting together with people from all different faiths and denominations.

The most memorable example of that was the Interfaith Roundtable Luncheon that I attended with my coworker a couple of days ago at the Beehive House, which was originally the home of Brigham Young. It was about forty representatives from every faith you could imagine: Quaker, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Methodist, United Church of Christ, Christian Scientist, Mormon, African Methodist Episcopal, Lutheran, Episcopalian and some I had never even heard of! This group formed before the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City to organize chaplains for the event and kept meeting in the spirit of fellowship (and free lunch on the Mormons!) and has organized an Interfaith Week which grew into a Month every year since then to celebrate and acknowledge the diversity in Salt Lake City. Also, it was a neat group of people and I am very glad I was able to tag along and meet a lot of them!

This week, I kept switching gears between the Mercy-type tasks and the Justice-type tasks. It was wonderful to see both sides of that, with one day being spent packing meals for clients and directly providing them with a three day emergency supply of food and then the next, exploring different denominations’ stances on immigration for our upcoming Las Posadas procession. A lot of them said wonderfully similar phrases about affirming the humanity of each individual and treating everyone with respect and love, regardless of what documents they have or don’t have. I also got to survey a good selection of our clients about current issues such as payday lenders, tickets for panhandlers, Medicaid, and finding housing and employment. This was for our Poverty Summit coming up on October 1. I also had my first trip to the State Capitol to attend a Rally for Medicaid. I did not realize until writing all of this down just how much has been going on the past couple of days. No wonder I feel like I need an IV full of espresso. Or just more prayer. Possibly a combination of both. Phew! Good stuff!

In other news, I am feeling slightly more settled in here. I have a bit of a routine and I now have more thoughts like “Man, I need coffee!” and fewer like “What in the Sam Hill am I doing?!” Now I need to focus on making those routines semiproductive things like blogging or emailing or exploring the city either by walking or public transport and perhaps fewer episodes of television shows. Of course, I could always say that television is self care and that some mindless entertainment is good for de-stressing! But I know what will be excellent for de-stressing: Sam Weller’s Bookstore! I encountered that Mecca for booklovers on my way back from turning a form into a City office. I had heard of it before, but I had no idea the wonders that awaited me: three floors of new, used and rare books on any topic imaginable, a coffee shop that had real Cafe au Lait (and called it by its proper French name!), those sliding ladders to get to the top shelves that you can actually climb on and move around, beaten up armchairs just waiting for a lazy Saturday afternoon! I cannot wait to return, especially after they move closer to my apartment! I definitely look forward to exploring more of Salt Lake City, especially since I heard that they have British style tea rooms with clotted cream and scones and everything!

 

Homesickness

Yes, it was bound to happen. And yes, I knew to expect it. But dadgum if it didn’t surprise me this evening! There I was, relaxing with my book after a reasonably pleasant day of work when the thought suddenly popped into my head “I’m reading my book alone. And then I will eat supper alone. And after that, I will go to sleep, wake up, and walk to work alone. And then, when I go out to eat, it will be alone. And I’ll go to the movies alone. And sit by myself at church. And I’ll sit by myself at coffee shops.” And it was just terrible! And that’s the problem with having an active imagination; I just had this vision of swaths of time spent alone, talking to myself occasionally just to hear someone’s voice.

Happily, I snapped out of that dismal train of thought fairly quickly (with the help of my wonderful sisters and friends)! I just need to find my niche here and get to where I have folks near my own age here that I can hang out with from time to time. Also, leaving my apartment and going to the library and then to the coffee shop nearby was a top notch idea! Even if I’m not talking to them, it’s still great to have people around clanking dishes and absentmindedly asking the world what a five letter word for tree, third letter T is. And I know I will have more days like this when I feel dreadfully alone, but I also know that those will pass and that even if they are a terribly long way away, I do have people there for me and praying for me.

But I have to say, I have a really wonderful job. Crossroads Urban Center is a top notch place dedicated to the combination of giving people direct services like food, clothing, and assistance with other necessities and advocacy work to make Utah a better place for the impoverished, minorities, and people with disabilities. And the best thing is that I get to help out with all of it. I spend some of my time working in the food pantry, all day yesterday, I was sorting clothes and such at the thrift store (they had some awesome denim shirts with embroidered squirrels and shoulder pads if anyone wants them! Or a sweet muumuu! Ha!). And I am also helping out with a Las Posadas procession around our downtown with area churches in memory of Mary and Joseph’s search for a room in the inn (donkey included!). But we are also emphasising a deeper meaning by tying it in with the rights of undocumented workers and those we are turning away. So I definitely feel that my work will be relevant not only as my position as a Young Adult Missionary, but also as a Christian, and I certainly hope that I will continue to feel that way even if I do get homesick or lonely or cranky along the way (which I certainly will!)

 

First Days at Crossroads!

It has been a whirlwind few days in Salt Lake City. I moved into my apartment Saturday and Sunday and toured the town a little and got everything I needed to start work Monday. It has been a great few days but I will admit I’m feeling a bit dazed at this point from all of the names and faces and alphabet soup of acronyms hitting me at warp speed! But everything I’ve heard so far and all of the people I’ve met and will be working with have been very patient about getting me up to speed, but are definitely keeping me busy, which is absolutely a great thing. The strangest thing is that people knew who I was even before I got there and were very ready for me! Now that was pretty cool! Odd, but cool.
I’ll try to remember a few of the things I learned the past few days, but I’m a little tired and there has been a plethora of new information bombarding me. So here goes: Crossroads Urban Center is a grassroots nonprofit that serves the homeless, the disabled, and other Utahns in need through a combination of direct services and advocacy. All of that lingo translates into Crossroads has an emergency food pantry that also does some other direct aid, and also has a thrift store to address clothing and more material needs (and is available for everyone to get some good stuff at unbeatable prices, not to mention free books for missionaries! Score!). Crossroads also has a Food Co Op that provides locally grown and natural/organic food and fresh baked bread and all kinds of goodies to the Salt Lake City area at below market costs. Today I worked at their mobile market and seriously wanted to buy everything! It all looked so dang good!
The other aspect of Crossroads that I will be working with is the alphabet soup of advocacy and community organizations that are run out of Crossroads. There is the Coalition of Religious Communities, the Anti Hunger Action Committee, and the Homeless Opportunity and Rights Network. They (well, we, I suppose) advocate on issues brought to their attention by the communities served by the direct services of Crossroads such as predatory payday lenders, residential needs, and others.
Of course, I have loads more to learn, but I am starting to recognize a few important names, dates, and events so it’s getting more comprehensible by the day! What continues to strike me is walking around and seeing these ginormous mountains everywhere! It is so pretty! And I will continue to update semi-regularly, so more to come!

 

On the Road Again

My dad and I started out from Baton Rouge yesterday morning and since then, we have made it through Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and are now in Laramie!

In that time, we have listened to about 25 “Classic Rock” or “Good Times Oldies” radio stations, broken out into song over “Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains” and “Somwhere Over the Rainbow,” answered Trivial Pursuit questions for a couple of hours, stared vacantly out the window thinking that Dallas traffic/ cornfields/ wheat fields/ Kansas would never end, sung along to all of Les Miserables, wondered if those shapes in the distance were clouds or mountains, and visited The World’s Largest Prairie Dog in Kansas (with petting zoo! Kids get in free!), and lamented about Jordan Jefferson (LSU quarterback) being so stupid as to get thrown off the team!

The last time I was this far west was in fourth grade. So that has been a long time! I enjoy seeing different bits of the country zoom by (even Kansas, though it did have an unfortunate habit of going on forever!). Now we’re getting into really neat mountains and rock formations. Makes me think of words like craggy and desolate and windswept and rugged. Like there needs to be a dusty figure in the distance on a horse or something. Tomorrow, after seeing them in the distance for a while, we finally get into the real Rocky Mountains! I just pray I don’t get too carsick…but it will be absolutely gorgeous! And then, finally, we’ll be in Salt Lake City!