 This is a personal account of a trip to attend the Unitarian Universalist Pacific Western Region Assembly of Congregations held at the Double Tree Hotel in Portland, Oregon, April 27-29, 2018. The theme of the assembly was “Stories of Hope, Courage, Resistance and Resilience”. My attention to this event was drawn by a notice about it in the December 2017 UUCGV Newsletter. The following narrative is based on information provided about the event and notes made at the sessions attended.
I missed several of the presentations relating to the conference theme due to spending evenings off site at the less expensive but distant Portland International Youth Hostel. The seven venues or events which I did visit, attend or in which I participated, are highlighted herein: the keynote address, caucusing, the UU College of Social Justice, ‘Living Cully’, the trailer parks walk through, the book displays, and the Sunday morning worship. First, why offer to share this experience with readers of the UUCGV Newsletter? It is because the event was very meaningful to me, and I am hopeful that at least parts of it may be to you. In particular, I am thinking about those parts concerning the UU College of Social Justice; the titles of books providing spiritual grounding for social justice centered work; and the challenges of providing, protecting and preserving adequate housing for low-wage households. But now, back to the beginning. Keynote Speech On Saturday morning, April 28, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, a former immigration and labor activist in Seattle and current Washington State’s 7th District legislator in the US Congress, gave the keynote address. Jayapal is the first Indian-American to be elected to Congress. She said that she ran for Congress because she realized that we were losing ground and she wanted to build common ground and personal ground; people power, not corporate power. She said, “Progressive ideas are not left; they are centrist in that they support all of us – teachers, caregivers, ironworkers, farm workers, sanitation people, women in every industry who have suffered disrespect, people who work for those in despair, and ministers who tend our souls.” She related some of the good things that happened recently, among others, non-Muslims showing up at protests to support loyal American Muslims and the defeat of Trumpcare three times. Concerning our failures, she cited those to provide coal miners with clean alternative energy jobs and ‘buying in’ on corporate lobbyists’ ideas that there is nothing we can do about what is going on. She concluded by saying, “We need to spend more money on poverty, raise wages, invest in affordable housing, fix our tax system, have income equality, and reinstate nutrition assistance for children. I am for BIG ideas. Did anyone ever accomplish anything worthwhile by thinking small? Thanks to each of you who have done something that took risk, not knowing what the outcome might be.” Caucus Following the keynote presentation, the several hundred attendees were divided into 35 groups of six to eight individuals for caucusing. Caucus is an international practice that is used by Unitarian Universalists; every social justice project; in democracies; and across the world for political, economic and social reasons. It is structured to facilitate listening and conversation to allow more voices to be recognized, to develop ideas, and to discuss what it is like to be ‘us,’ what it is like to be ‘on the margins,’ and what it means to live with a certain identity. Every person has several identities. These include such categories as citizen or immigrant, ethnicity, gender, physicality, race, religion, sex, gender and socioeconomic status. The intersection of all these identities creates a spectrum of privilege or marginalization which affects access to opportunities and experiences in life and shapes how we are united with or separated from others. Caucus requires all participants to lean into the discomfort of conversations that society has sought to prevent. In our caucus group of six, we discussed, “What it means to be White?; where does privilege show up in our lives?; how might we acknowledge, support, and draw support from people of color?; what is patriarchy?; what is White fragility?; and what are micro-aggressions?” I was asked to not take notes to protect the privacy of the participants. Hence I remember little regarding individual responses. But in general, we reported being comfortable in the majority and greatly benefited by our ‘Whiteness.’ The Unitarian Universalist College of Social Justice On Saturday afternoon along with 50 others, I chose to go on the Experiential Learning Field Trip to ‘Living Cully,’ (LC) a northeast Portland nonprofit. The orientation for the trip was led by three staff members of the UU College of Social Justice (UUCSJ) in Boston, Massachusetts. The College offers year round ‘Justice Journeys’ for individuals or youth groups. These ‘Journeys’ are designated to deepen participants understanding of and ignite their passion for social justice. Each program includes interactive activities and hands-on service. These ‘Journeys’ explore racial, economic, immigration and climate justice in Boston, MA; Immokalee, FL; New Orleans, LA; Tucson, AZ and West Virginia. In addition to ‘Journeys,’ the UUCSJ offers ‘Grow’ workshops for young adult activities, aged 18 to 34, to deepen spiritual grounding, to develop skills and to build community to sustain justice work. Finally, the UUCSJ provides ‘Internships’ with small stipends for young adults to put their faith into action for social change. But back to the Experiential Learning Field Trip orientation. ‘Living Cully’s’ mission was described as “re-interpreting sustainability as an anti-poverty strategy by concentrating environmental investment at the neighborhood scale and braiding those investments with traditional community development resources.” We were told that LC works for jobs and economic development, transportation advocacy, and anti-displacement (foreclosures), youth programs, after school programs, health, the environment, the creation of a neighborhood park (Cully Park) to be opened this summer, 16 years after the project idea in 2002, and affordable housing about which you will read in the following section. ‘Living Cully’ Following our orientation to ‘Living Cully’ at the Double Tree, we were loaded onto a tour bus. Fifteen minutes later, the bus rolled into an old building with a ‘Living Cully’ sign above the entrance. We unloaded, entered and were seated by staff members (volunteers?) Tony, Maya, and Dave, each of whom spoke to us in turn. Tony informed us that, “Unitl recently this headquarters building was a ‘Sugar Shack’ in which a lot of illegal stuff was going on. A few years back the owners were called to account and had to sell the building. ‘Living Cully’ bought it in 2015.” He added that in the near future, ‘Hacienda Housing Development,’ a partner with LC, will build 130 units of affordable housing on the site. Maya said, “Despite the recent 2015 acquisition, we still don’t have enough property ownership in our neighborhood to keep gentrification from creeping in.” In this regard, she said that LC was creating a land acquisition fund. ‘Cully Coalition on Property,’ a group of a dozen or so churches has given LC $15,000. A Presbyterian church is donating $50,000 over five years. Local people are now coming to LC offering to sell the nonprofit their property to be redeveloped as affordable housing. She added, “We need to be proactive and not just let injustice come to us.” Concerning the immediate neighborhood, Dave said that Cully was one of the most diverse suburbs in Portland with 50 percent people of color, and equivalent number of non-English-speaking residents and a majority of low-income families. He added, “Thirty-four percent of its streets are without sidewalks. Parents have to walk their children to school down the sides of the streets. Many ‘sidewalks’ that do exist are of mud, sand, gravel or grass. Schools have new principals about every year and reading and math scores are low.” Walk-Through of Mobile Home Parks in the Cully Neighborhood Tony then invited us to walk around some of the mobile parks in the neighborhood to hear more about and see some of the challenges facing LC in its efforts to protect and promote affordable housing in the neighborhood. At the first park, with monthly rates at $500, he told us that the park owner is proposing to take out the trailers and build 15x20 foot (300 square feet) tiny homes which will sell for $40,000, plus monthly rent for the space in which they will sit. He added, “Everyone is moving to Portland. There is only 1% vacancy. This is driving up all costs for living units.” As we passed the second park, he remarked, “Rents here are being raised 50% without the owner fixing anything up to force people out. And rents are slated to rise 9.5% annually going forward. Developers prefer to build high-rent units.” He added, “We have to find ways to keep landlords from raising rents and putting people out.” In this regard he said that LC was going to conduct interviews Thursday evening, May 3, to determine the extent of maintenance needs and of failures by property owners to follow existing rules and regulations in order to bring infractions to light and force owners into compliance or lower proposed rental rates proportionately. Next, we walked past a third park with trailers parked within six feet of each other. Tony said that it is required that three feet be allowed so that the trailers can be walked around. The good news was that this park had been slated for sale to out-of-town developers who wanted to buy it for gentrification. However the developers failed to give advance notice to the residents so the proposal was rejected by the city. With the help of local churches, the property was purchase by ‘Living Cully’ and will become a neighborhood residential area for low income residents and will not be gentrified. Writer’s Comments The challenges facing ‘Living Cully’ to protect renters and fend off developers are not unique among nonprofit city housing advocates. Donna Anderson, writer of “How to Protect a Renter Nation” in the summer of 2018 ‘Affordable Housing’ issue of YES! Magazine reports, “It is almost as if cities want to build new housing for higher income earners, bring those people in, and push the existing community out. Nationwide, renters make up to 51 percent of the population of U.S. cities. It is important to understand that tenants’ rights are not a small, niche issue. It’s a major fight for working-class people of color asserting their right to place.” (pp.35-36) Elsewhere in the same issue, another writers report, “Wages have not kept pace with the cost of housing nor has the number of low-cost houses kept pace with the number of those in need of them. Wages for low-income earners have been stagnant since 1980 (almost 40 years) while housing prices have gone up 50 percent in today’s dollars. Over eleven million ‘cost burdened’ renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. And for every 100 extremely low-income households, only 29 affordable units are available. As a nation, we prioritize housing for the wealthy over that for the poor.” (pp. 1, 17; 22) Display of Books On Sunday morning, April 29, hundreds of books displayed two-row deep on three six-foot long tables placed end to end greeted me when I arrived at the Double Tree Hotel for the morning service which was to take place three hours later. Prior to the service I managed to look over them all despite the fact that books were purchased and changed in and out and new titles added. More than three dozen categories included: biblical interpretation, capitalism, Christianity, democracy, fascism, guns inequality, justice, money, non-violence, poverty, power, racism, spirituality and wages. The category which most caught my eye was that designed to deepen spirituality grounded action for social justice work. Among the titles recommended by the UUCSJ are Justice on Earth, edited by Manish Mishra-Marzetti; Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown; Centering, edited by Mitra Rahnema; Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson; The Third Reconstruction by William J. Barber II; Reclaiming Prophetic Witness by Paul Rasor and Sacred Ground by Eboo Patel. I jotted down a total of 50 titles of which I consider twelve ‘must reads.’ But I purchased only two: In Non-Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2006), Mark Kurlansky discusses non-violence as a distinct technique for overcoming social injustice and ending wars. In Reclaiming Prophetic Witness, (2012), Paul Rasor dispels the myth that conservative Christianity is the only valid voice in the national debates on social policy and calls upon religious liberals to bring their religious convictions to bear on the issues of our time… At this moment, the call came for morning worship. Morning Worship Following song, opening words, the lighting of the chalice, a body prayer, a litany of atonement, a blessing, reading of Psalm 12 and more music, Reverend Vanessa Rush Southern, minister of a San Francisco UU congregation, delivered the sermon entitled ‘Mercy, Mercy Me.’ Her message was based on the words attributed to the Old Testament prophet Micah as recorded in the Bible in the book of Micah, chapter six and verse eight, “Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly before your God.” She said, “In our world, love and mercy are often after thoughts. Yet mercy in the Unitarian Universalist tradition is right up there with Justice. Justice is one side of the coin; mercy is the other. Justice is too harsh; it requires the balance of mercy.” She remarked that to ‘love mercy’ means to ‘desire kindness’ so that we may be freed from unkindness (or evil) we have done to others. She added that mercy is radical big heartedness. The pastor told the story of how she had deeply hurt a girlfriend when she was in the eighth grade. After she apologized, her 13 year-old friend said, “Let’s just forget it and start all over again.” The minister said that after her friend forgave her and showed revolutionary love at age thirteen. She added that God only moves to mercy when we show repentance (when we apologize as she did to her friend). She concluded her sermon saying that mercy comes from the word ‘olive,’ the oil of which in ancient times was considered a human balm. “Mercy is what love in action looks like.” Following her sermon, an offering was taken up to be divided between three entities: ‘Living Cully,’ the UU Youth College Scholarship Fund, and a fledgling UU congregation in southern California. After the offering, the service was concluded with the prayer, “We are not alone, we are better together, and God in his/her many names is with us.” The conference was over at the conclusion of the Sunday morning worship. Back Home So what have I taken away from the experience? A greater appreciation for UU beliefs, observances and actions; two new UU acquaintances and hopefully, correspondents; an introduction to ‘caucusing’; a dozen worthwhile new ‘reads’; and interest in learning about the circumstances of low-income renters locally; new insight to Mica 6:8, and that at 86, I can actually make such a trip in one piece. I thank Mallory for registering me and helping me prepare for the event. David Pilkenton, Friend UUC Grand Valley |
Archives
June 2023
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
|
|