The sanctuary was pin-drop silent and electric as a group of about 100 immigrant parishioners heard the last report-out from a small group in a mass “house meeting.”
House meetings, a technique developed by Fred Ross Sr. who helped Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta build the United Farmworkers Union, are simply gatherings to talk about what’s going on, what pressures people are feeling, and if they want to do something about it. Ross learned organizing from Saul Alinsky, founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation, the nation’s largest and longest standing organizing network, of which Together West Michigan is an affiliate.
I can’t tell you the exact words spoken “from the chest” at the front of the church, but it wasn’t a lecture to not be afraid or to just keep your head down or a bemoaning of how bad things are. It was a pointed, lightning bolt reminder of who the families in that sanctuary were: children of God, valuable creations, parents with strong values, people who have fought and sacrificed for good. It was a message in direct opposition to so many of the media messages about immigrant families, and it struck home.
That message emerged from what theologian Walter Brueggemann calls “the public processing of pain.” It’s the first of three stages he proposes in the formation and action of a free people and it’s at the roots of the broad-based community organizing that Together West Michigan Education Fund teaches and Together West Michigan practices.
Together West Michigan is a broad-based community organization of 18 member institutions (and growing) whose mission is to be a vehicle for regular people to have a voice at the tables where decisions are made about their lives. We do that by building power: organizing people and developing their skills as active participants and leaders in public life and organizing money to support the work. Specifically, we build relational power – not power over or against others, but power with one another across the lines that tend to divide, even if it’s just the space between people in the same sanctuary pew.
That starts in human to human conversation.
Before anything can change, we have to process together what is happening by sharing our stories of the pressures we and those we love are facing. When we do, something happens – we begin to see that we are not alone.
That night at the parish, families who sit in the same sanctuary every week spoke honestly to each other, in many cases for the first time, about the pressures they’re facing right now. Several young women preparing for their quince años shared deep, constant fear of their parents being deported. Everyone nodded vigorously along in another group about being paid less while having to work more because employers suspected they were undocumented. In almost every group, parents talked about wanting help with Parental Delegation of Authority letters to ensure their kids were in the custody of someone they trust if they get deported.
The sanctuary was heavy. And at the same time, someone in every group said something like this: “This is the first time we’ve actually talked about what we’re going through. Thank you.”
This opens the door to Brueggemann’s second stage – a critique of the dominant ideology. We start to see that perhaps the pain and pressure we face is not just because we’re failing to be virtuous enough individuals (though we always have room to improve). Perhaps something bigger is going on.
It’s tempting when we don’t talk with each other to think it’s just our own personal failings causing pressure. But in the sanctuary that night, it was clear that the fear, the working conditions, and the anxiety were caused by systems designed to take advantage of people and treat them as less than. The tone shifted from sadness and hopelessness to a simmering, honest anger. The fear was still there, but it was no longer the central feeling.
Once we begin to critique together, we can begin to imagine new ways things could work, “the release of a new social imagination.” And once we start to see a new way of doing things in our mind, we can begin to act on it – this time not on our own, but with the power of other organized people around us.
The key desires that came out of those house meetings included conversations with local police, concrete help with those Parental Delegation of Authority letters, an understanding of people’s rights, and pathways to permanence for people who have been here doing everything a contributing community member does, but without the same rights.
That was at the start of February this year.
The team of eight people from the parish who put those house meetings together did three more rounds of conversation and talked with 400 of their parishioners in a month.
Since then, they’ve come into relationship with leaders from Together West Michigan at institutions they would never have met, from Episcopalian and Reformed Churches to downtown law firms and the Dominican Sisters, from a Jewish temple and a Montessori School to a Grand Rapids Third Ward neighborhood organization.
Working together, those parish leaders and Together West Michigan leaders have met with a local police chief to clarify their policies around immigration enforcement and are bringing other leaders from the parish where meetings were held into that conversation. They’ve worked with attorneys and notaries from Together West Michigan institutions and friends to hold a Delegation of Parental Authority letter workshop. And, they’ve held meetings with key business leaders about how to create pressure not for deportation, but for pathways to permanence.
We all want to resolve pain and pressure as fast as we can. And yet, at the heart of every great movement to create a better and more just world, from Civil Rights to the United Farmworkers Union and beyond, Brueggemann’s three stages are both present and extremely local. We can’t consistently sit face to face with others to publicly process pain or do anything else unless it’s the people around us in our own community. As frustrating as it may seem, the “slow, patient spadework” of relational organizing, to borrow Ella Baker’s phrase, is central to changemaking. It means conversations across lines that tend to divide, be they language, skin color, neighborhood, income, or even political party.
As we do this work and new possibilities of both imagination and action emerge a la Brueggemann, we’re able not only to begin to change small things but lean into bigger things as relational power strengthens and begins to open the possibility of reaching higher and further.
Do you want to build and exercise relational power?
If we’ve ever needed to do it, now is the time, and we are the ones. Take a step and let’s go.
- If your institution is interested in learning more about joining the local broad-based organization, Together West Michigan, reach out to organizewmi@gmail.com to set up a conversation.
- If you’re interested in training, reaching out to Allison at twmeducationfund@gmail.com
- Check out Together West Michigan Education Fund and Together West Michigan
- Like “Together West Michigan” on Facebook to hear about events and what’s going on
- Get a copy of “Blessed Are The Organized” by Jeffrey Stout to learn more about the broad-based organizing tradition of Together West Michigan Education Fund and Together West Michigan.
Allison McCulley is the Lead Organizer of Together West Michigan and Principal Trainer for Together West Michigan Education Fund. She has been organizing in Michigan for 17 years, most recently in Grand Rapids. She has worked with organizations to win on a range of issues including affordable housing, affordable quality childcare, immigrant and refugee well-being and more and has led organizing trainings at the local, state, and national level.
