the continuously fractured life

Your Very Own Gender Studies Degree: Dolores Mission Peace Walks

But first, how can I get my Very Own Gender Studies Degree?

Dolores Mission, a Jesuit Catholic Parish in East LA was established in 1980 to serve a neighborhood hindered by poverty and the effects of active gangs within the two-square-mile parish. In the early 1990s, a group of women in the parish met in search of a solution to the issue of gang violence in the neighborhood citing that gang-related killings and injuries were an almost daily occurrence.

One night, after a long discussion, seventy women (and a few men), began walking the streets, from one gang turf to the next, throughout theneighborhood. They met with gang members and offered them food and a listening ear. Throughout the night, neighborhood conflicts were directly interrupted.

From that night forward, the members of the newly formed Comite Pro Paz En El Barrio (Committee for Peace in the Neighborhood) walked throughout the neighborhood and within a week there was a remarkable drop in gang-related violence due to the nonviolent intervention. They had challenged the traditional, circular script of violence and retaliation and created, for a time, a new and more creative movement. By entering into danger, the group created a transitory space for peace where all parties witnessed each other as human. The gang-members were able to see, many for the first time that other members of the community were interested in them. At the same time, the women were able to address and confront their fear and anger and see the human face of gang members.

The women listened to the pain of the gang-members about the lack of jobs and police brutality, conversations which led them to develop a tortilla factory, bakery, and child-care center, creating jobs and giving people in the neighborhood opportunities to acquire job skills and conflict resolution techniques as people from different gangs worked together. Eventually, the women opened a school and moved from being the eyes and ears of the police to being trained to monitor and report abusive police behavior. This redefined the relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department and the neighborhood.

Poverty, racism, and violence still exist in East LA, however, the peace walks served as a trigger point and a huge step toward creating a restorative environment.

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Information from:

http://www.dolores-mission.org/parish.php

http://www.thirdside.org/stories_01.cfm

Various class notes.

 

Things to Think About

1. What does this say about “bad neighborhoods”?

2. What does this say about women in those neighborhoods?

3. How does the role of confronting our own fear play into such situations?

My Collected Friends: Further Thoughts on Buzzwords

One night last month I sat, listened, and discussed Christianity and community with some friends and new acquaintances. The topic was furthering our definition of the word “community”. I guess it can slip into one of those buzzwords I’ve blogged about. Sometimes in upholding “beloved community” we teeter into an over-emphasis on diversity and collecting people so that we are forcibly inclusive and multicultural, not so we are loving and learning from each other. There is an awfully thin line in that process. It seems it’s pretty easy to make an idol of community (justice, peace, harmony, etc) and not focus on the respect of individual people.

I have stated before that I am really great at making my heart look good and community is another way of projecting goodness onto self-centeredness. Sometimes I look around the room and take note of how diverse my group of friends is, thinking, “yes, I am doing a good job,” instead of “look at this family.” 

After 15 years, Mission Year is starting to take steps toward figuring out how we make whomever “the other” is into “us”. How do we move from welcoming people into our homes, where we are good Christians, to making a real, holistic community? Figuring out community has been difficult in some ways for me because, unlike in a year-long program, there is no built-in re-evaluation point. I discuss life deeply with friends and at church but there is no program accountability that requires me to check-in every week about how I am doing in my neighborhood. I just have to do this, for a very long time. I just have to try and talk to my neighbors who speak a different language than I do, every day without later writing about it in a newsletter. There is no end point where I stop this project, and figure out another one. It’s all just life. I guess that’s the point – to make seeking community your life, and not a project to evaluate. 

I really have to chew on that. It’s easy to get it wrong. I wrote my final paper last quarter on the false sense of sisterhood in Feminism and I think we sometimes have a false sense of real, inclusive community within Christian circles. I mean that even if we live outside the Evangelical bubble, we still unintentionally create safe spaces with people who are trying to live just like us. I do this. Two years out and my safe space (aside from a few close friends) is still Mission Year. I feel like I can breathe and like I don’t have to explain myself and like I am not too loud or too quiet around staff or other alumni. I like inviting people in for a little while, introducing them around, and letting them know they’re always welcome. But I still hold this as a family you must work yourself into, which is my own fault. Some of that is emotionally appropriate but it’s not the big picture, its still instituting unintentional status. Community is not just a safe place we retreat to and open up for others to spend time in. In some ways, I’m trying to figure out how to make the outside world, the inside world (if you’d like to discuss Jesus preaching on being separate from the world, we can. I think it’s a totally different topic).

I’m trying to reconcile living like we’ve had some really good friends over and now it’s time for them to go home and for us to go to sleep, with the communal God I believe in. After all, community does not exist for us as individuals it exists to benefit others. It exists to get rid of the label of “other” in the neighborhood, in school, in church, and in extended family.

I really miss living in a community house and sharing money and responsibilities and laughing and having hard conversations and letting everyone think it’s a noble, idealistic way to live life. I really put that on a pedestal, which is something there is no place for. How do I make what I consider my safe community, move outward? I am guilty of living a counter-culture life in a counter-culture circle. Even with all my talk on changing the world, I am guilty of retreating to familiarity and repetition. 

I want to reiterate that there is a need for a private, safe family arena; I guess it’s just dangerous to keep it the main goal, to count on it to be and let it stay the only place you can breathe. To keep it so sacred that it is not what it was originally supposed to be – a benefit to everyone. The idea of “community” is nebulous (thanks Megan) but the history of it is strong. In The Cloister Walk Kathleen Norris writes, “Blessed be those who throw the church doors wide open.” That is the challenge – to throw the doors open and keep them that way.

Ever Since, Every Day

 

Exactly a year ago I packed up a suitcase, a backpack, and a yoga mat, and moved out of my apartment in East Garfield Park. My four other roommates did the same. Three of us (myself, Meredith and Pedro) moved back to Chicago a few weeks later, to different locations and slightly different lives. Briefly, I spent Aug. 2009 - Aug. 2010 with a program called Mission Year, working, learning, and living in the 60612 zip code, which was, during that year, topping the list of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America. If you want, you can watch a short movie about it all here. I left with a lot of conflicting feelings that I continue to have and even add to (hence the name of this blog). But, the experience totally altered the course of my life and how I see the world.  A friend told me over the phone last week that I haven’t changed in the past year, I’ve just refocused. That seems about right. This continues to be really messy but I don’t live with the fear I had before I moved to Chicago, for which I am extremely grateful. Sure, there are other fears, real and created, but I’m not so scared of this new trajectory. Still, today I really need a reminder of the past two years.

I mostly want to update everyone who supported me while I was living in East Garfield, so forgive me if I’m too personal for your taste. If you want to read more about gender issues and documentaries, I’ll be back to that tomorrow. Promise. Mission Year put me in a position (working at a women’s shelter) to learn and care more about gender issues than I ever had before, which brought me to my current job, working with teen moms.  Actually, that’s not true – the program helped me to understand and focus more on my anger over issues. I learned a lot about mixing anger with love and sustainable change. I’m still working on that. My experience with money has changed a lot. I currently live on 1/3 the salary I lived on when I worked as an editor, pre-August 2009. This week, that fact is terrifying me a little bit, but I’m working through the lies. The past two years has changed my perspective on finances, savings, giving, stress, and politics over income in a huge way. I used to say you shouldn’t talk too much about poverty until you’d actually lived at or below the nation’s average salary. Now I really believe it because it’s so complicated (although I realize that as I have no debt, no kids, and a college degree, I am still at a financial advantage to most of the country/world). Every month I scan over my budget, consider food stamps, and then consider who really needs that money to feed their family (I realize this is a longer conversation but, let’s not have it right now). Still, I love my job and think it’s incredibly important. I would go so far as to say I feel privileged to have a fulfilling job at an organization that is providing solidarity and emotional support for teenagers, which directly works to diminish violence in Chicago. But, I’ll probably need reminding. 

Also – I decided to go to grad school and enter into a program (Women’s and Gender Studies), which will most likely not raise my earning potential very much. Even though I, again, think it’s an important subject that I enjoy talking and learning about, all the time, it’s fairly scary for people to try and understand. I don’t really have an answer about what I’m going to do with it when I graduate. If you have ideas, please let me know. It’s not a quantifiable investment. I won’t graduate with a degree and then make scads of money in the gender ethics world, although I really enjoy joking about it.

I just sent one of my best friends in the whole world, Pedro, back to the east coast. This is a situation for which I pretended to be emotionally prepared. We were driving through North Lawndale last week and passed the street corner where I first met all my former housemates/family. Since then two of them have gotten baptized and one has gotten married. I am so happy that I got to be in their lives for those commitments. What an honor. I remember being in North Lawndale, wearing a blue shirt and moving bikes up against the wall of a church sanctuary. I remember my then Director, now friend, Shawn saying, “God is here, He’s been here, and He’ll be here when you leave.” I still really cling to that. I know that I take God with me and leave Him places as well. I know that I don’t do any good work by myself. I know that even thought it’s really painful that Pedro has moved, God stays with me and God goes with him too. When I said goodbye a few days ago, even though I was really upset, I remember thinking that this is all that really matters – these types of communal relationships. This is the core of everything I believe in. But, I’ll probably need reminding. 

There are some things I won’t forget at all. I won’t forget last June when we were too low on money and time to do laundry, so I boiled water in a huge pot on the stove, washed my clothes, and then cleaned the pot out and made spaghetti. I won’t forget having to eat popcorn for breakfast and I won’t forget that some people have to do that every day. I won’t forget trying to figure out the difference between gunshots and fireworks. I won’t forget being screamed at for my skin color. I won’t forget how lonely life can be for some people, and how that is more important than my personal opinion on their situation. I won’t forget staying up all night laughing my head off with my roommates. I won’t forget that God is faithful in His own way and time, which is way better than my way and time. Ok, Yes. I will forget these things. I’ll probably need reminding. 

Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?
Acts 26:8

Documentary Recommendation 007.

Out in the Silence. Homosexuality, dignity, bullying, and community development. Watch it.

Church does not equal satisfaction.

The American Sociological Review recently published findings from a University of Wisconsin-based study stating that a person’s religious beliefs do not necessarily make them happier or more satisfied with life. What does (in terms of religious identity)? Having friends at a congregation. Regular churchgoers who have no close friends in their congregations are no more likely to be satisfied with their lives than those who never attend church, according to the research. This is in respect to the debate about whether or not people who attend church are happier than people who do not attend, which is apparently pretty popular.

Note:  I have more questions.

"May your soul be as strong as your people."

— RELEVANT Magazine - An Open Letter to Anne Rice