gathering of people who work and pray with laughterto reach for stars that seem too distant to be touched,
or too dim to be worth the effort.
We try to be friends with persons in need,
And to celebrate life with people who believe that the struggle to follow Jesus
In building a world more justly loving is worth the gift of their lives.
Anonymous
This is a story of people working together to build community. By developing positive human relationships, a group of residents who lived in neighborhoods in St. Louis, Missouri, connected and began to work on community issues of benefit to all. The story is about faith, not church; people, not race; generosity, not poverty; equity, not equality; and justice, not selfishness. This story challenges norms of religion, social work, community organizing and non-profit management. It is also a story challenging the expectations of human behavior and relationships. The story tells how people with vastly different lives came together, worked together, enjoyed one another and built a community in which everyone contributed no matter their race, economic status, social position or life experience. It took many years to reach this point. A community grew where the whole was much greater than its parts and where differences of experience mattered in making things better for everyone.
In order to address the challenges presented in bringing people of different backgrounds together, I formulated new definitions of words commonly used in the field of social services. This redefining creates an understanding of where our challenges originated, the work needed to address them and how the positive relationships we made were countercultural. The definitions are outside the norm and stand against the present culture of the church, in opposition to current social work methods, and a challenge to community organizing and corporate approaches to decision-making. The definitions draw strength from the contributions of a diverse array of community members and celebrate the connections between people who would not usually come together.
A DIFFERENT WAY OF THINKING
The redefining includes words such as service, ghetto, redevelopment, community, grassroots and empirical evidence. When used by people whose experience defines them, words become more real. Service, for example, may express power or patriarchy--“I’m better than you and I can tell you what you need”, or it may mean putting another person’s needs ahead of your own. As a graduate of St. Louis University School of Social Service, I learned service meant following the ethics of social work—starting where the other person is, not using them to meet your needs, being consistent in your approach and insuring self-determination by identifying options together. Service requires a sacrifice of time, money, personal need and relationships. Not everyone is prepared to make.
A ghetto can be a run-down area of a city where only poor people live, no one else goes and fear dominates the people inside and out. Or, a ghetto may be a state of mind in which people isolate themselves from any thoughts or feelings which challenge their place, comfort, or compassion. A “gated-community” is a ghetto of like-minded individuals who have separated themselves from the rest of the world and hope to avoid people who are different. People in a gated-community place themselves “away” from any responsibility for others. A ghetto is any area where people have an experience separate from civil society. People in a ghetto only know what their neighbors know. All their neighbors know are the same experiences. Without connection to common, shared experiences it’s difficult for people to act differently. For example, our economy now makes mainstream experiences those of being poor or living paycheck to paycheck. People who have not worked realize how poverty impacts their lives. Those who live paycheck to paycheck understand the struggle of working, but don’t really know what it’s like to live in poverty. And the wealthy don’t understand either of these experiences. In many ways all three groups have shut themselves off from other people’s experiences, and created a “ghetto” experience which includes only their struggles or comforts, and their place or power or feeling of powerlessness.
In major cities across the country “redevelopment”occurs as young people move into urban areas. Redevelopment implies an area with problems which must be removed before new residents move in. The problems are usually defined as the poor, and usually, African American families and children. To improve an area, “these” people have to be replaced. In most cases this means younger, more affluent and mostly white people. The people who originally lived in these neighborhoods have kept them attractive enough to be redeveloped, but they are excluded from the improvements
Development of an area means taking all its strengths and stability and building from the roots up. Most areas in need of development have a strong core of citizens living there and helping make the area attractive to developers. This core of mostly lower income, African Americans, has the kind of strength and connections which outsiders identify as positive. However, instead of building with these residents, their stability is manipulated by those who want to remove them. Development allows everyone to benefit from an attractive area of the city in which people already live. Redevelopment and “gentrification” require the displacement or removal of that which makes American cities most attractive—diversity.
People often think of community as the area in which they live. This can be true, but more often what is felt as community is a group of people with common interests who may or may not live in a specific geographic area. People speak of the great community experience they have at their segregated church and come from miles around to attend. Others talk about their school community made up of middle and upper middle-class families who have found a way to guard their children’s education from outsiders. Some people consider a dog park as a place they find community.
A number of groups may live in a geographic area. These groups may seldom if ever come in contact with other groups’ members, even if they live next door to each other. Sometimes, these groups come into conflict with each other because of what each represents to the other. For example, I have heard white people discuss living in a diverse community, yet everything they do excludes the people who create the diversity. When problems occur, the people blamed are those who have less power.
Community organizing is called grassroots meaning it reaches people with less power than local representatives, party officials, and business leaders. Organizing helps people find ways to stand strongly in the face of those with power and not be pushed around. Such use of power to dominate people is called oppression. While I agree with this concept of organizing, it seems the process doesn’t always reach the roots of neighborhoods. In what I have seen of community organizing, it has involved more stable parts of a neighborhood or city.
In St. Louis, much community organizing was church-based. If you belonged to a church involved, you could be a part of the action. If you did not attend church you could be left out. In the community we served, the majority of people did not attend church. They were also poorer, almost all African American, and blamed for problems community organizing addressed.
An internet search of community organizing involving lower income residents of cities produced very little information. I recall only the Welfare Rights movement including and welcoming very low-income members. Some low-income community members may be involved in organizing, but in my experience, they are not targeted for involvement.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Social work and religion have struggled to prove their worth through the analysis of growth and change among participants. Some statistical analysis used to discern impact and change has not proven the connection. However, not everything is measurable by a count or a number. Emotional or social growth, empowerment and quality of life are examples of qualitative change hard
