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Overview Last month, the main focus of this report was the follow-up from the April 12 WISDOM Leadership Assembly, and some of the work we will do as we move toward our October Public Meetings. This month, I’ll try to focus a little more on things that are happening in each of our organizations. Just for a change of pace, I’ll pass along those updates in alphabetical order – backwards. If there is a theme to this report, it would be “interesting ideas.” One of the great advantages of having nine organizations all around the state is that we have many chances to experiment. Not every novel idea works every time, but when somebody has a good idea, we all have a chance to learn. In this report, you will see a bunch of new ideas – most of which are working pretty well! I want to save myself a little space, though, to recognize the passing of Rev. Robert L. Harris, who was the first President of the WISDOM organization. SOPHIA SOPHIA had a very big month. On April 29, the Religious Leaders of SOPHIA sponsored a very interesting event regarding “The Role of Religious Leaders in an Election Year.” About 30 member and non-member clergy and other religious leaders gathered at St. Luke’s ELCA congregation, along with Marcus White, director of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. Marcus led them in a very interesting discussion. A major theme was that there are very important things happening in our world – things related to life and death, war and peace, poverty and plenty – that are real moral, even spiritual matters. Just because candidates discuss them does not mean we can ignore them. The group discussed ways to be sure to address such matters so as to help inform people’s consciences, yet without giving any appearance of a partisan agenda. The event was even covered in a rather odd story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. On April 5, SOPHIA had a terrific Prayer Breakfast. Over 100 people came out to La Casa de Esperanza for it. There was a very nice breakfast, a fun and profitable Silent Auction, and an inspirational keynote talk by Judge Carl Ashley, who spoke about Treatment Instead of Prison. They also put out a very good ad book. Finally, on May 14, SOPHIA started its summer leadership training series. On the 14th, about 30 people, some of them new to SOPHIA, came to a “toolbox training” (sort of Organizing 101). Hopefully, they will all be back with friends on June 11, when the topic will be Core Teams. In July, we’ll work on One-on-Ones, and in August it will be Issues and Actions. I applaud SOPHIA for coming up with this innovative and systematic approach to building the base of their organization. RIC RIC has tentatively chosen October 21 as a Public Meeting date, and they have an ambitious goal of 500 participants. The RIC Education Committee has been very involved in a variety of issues, recently putting a great deal of effort into educating the public about the issues involved in a local funding referendum (which passed). The Committee is now looking to learn from the example of MICAH and to work on some issues related to health care and dental care for low-income students. (Studies show that the fastest way to begin closing the ‘achievement gap” would be to close the health care and dental care gap – It is hard to learn when your teeth hurt or when you haven’t slept because of an asthma attack.) RIC’s Sacred Ground Committee is working to bring “mentoring” to the entire community -- faith based and beyond. Building on their very well-attended summit last winter, they would like to put together a video of mentoring programs, to be made available to every organization in Racine and to be run it on local cable TV. They are putting together a list of mentoring vacancies in announcements and church bulletins. They are also planning for this year’s Housing Summit. They would like to have it in a picnic setting instead of a church. They will give tours as well as information on special grant opportunities and nontraditional lenders. RIC has also surfaced some new leaders, at least four of whom have expressed a desire to attend Weeklong Training in 2008. MICAH On May 5, MICAH held a training at St. Matthew’s ELCA church to start to prepare people to lead “Common Destiny” conversations. They are working to train 50 people to facilitate Conversations in 35 congregations. The goal is to have as many as 700 people participate in Faith and Destiny conversations before the time of the fall Public Meeting. MICAH will hold its annual banquet on Sunday, June 1. Their speaker this year will be Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, who founded the New Sanctuary Movement – a faith-based effort to stand up for the rights of immigrants, especially the undocumented. Among the many issues it is addressing, MICAH continues to develop the “People’s Campaign.” We hope that the first phase of the Campaign will come later this year when the City of Milwaukee passes an ordinance to greatly expand the Residential Preference Program (RPP), which would ensure that all major projects in the City would employ local people who need work. MICAH has announced October 23 as the date for its Public Meeting. Their goal is to gather 1,500 people that evening. JOSHUA JOSHUA had a very busy month of April. In my last report, we mentioned the very successful TIP forum. On April 27, JOSHUA held its annual fundraiser. There was a good crowd, and Jerry Hancock did a good job as the main speaker. For the event, JOSHUA published another very good Yearbook (as they call their Ad Book.) They did not quite meet their fundraising goal, though. On the 27th, Judy Vogels also took the reins as the president of JOSHUA. Many thanks are owed to Barbara Shiffer for her years of leadership. During much of Barbara’s tenure, JOSHUA had very limited staff support – yet the organization continued to grow. Jim Mitchell, Judy Vogels, Dick Vogels and Lois Pulvermacher all attended the Advanced Leadership Training of the Gamaliel Foundation last week. It is a chance for people who are already significant leaders in our organizations to reflect on their roles and their paths – to make their organizations stronger, and to live out their own values as powerfully as possible. It seems that the best thing is to do as JOSHUA did and have a group of people who work together go to the Advanced Training together. One more good idea from Green Bay: JOSUE (the Spanish-speaking arm of JOSHUA) is organizing and promoting a big blood drive in the Latino community. This is: a) a good thing to do for its own sake; b) a way to generate some recognition and some new relationships for JOSUE, and; c) a great way to counter the often virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric and sentiment that often hangs over Green Bay – demonstrating the civic-mindedness and good will of the immigrant community. JONAH JONAH’s primary focus these days is on its issues. There are three Issue Committees currently at work: Economic Justice, TIP, and Environmental. They have a few interesting first steps planned for those issues. Among them: · The Environmental Committee is going to start off by concentrating on the “Concert in the Park” series. Throughout the summer, hundreds of people come to these concerts, and they bring picnic dinners or snacks, or whatever. The Committee realized there are no reclycling receptacles in the park. So, they will set up a booth, collect people’s cans and bottles, and give them information on JONAH! · The Economic Justice Committee has discovered that wages in the Eau Claire area are some of the lowest in the whole Great Lakes region for cities of their size. They will start by pulling together business, labor and community leaders to make a commitment to work together to look at the reasons for their status, and to look at some possible remedies (including, e.g. Community Benefits agreements). JONAH will also hold its first grassroots fundraiser on June 22. It will be a “pie social.” Part of the time will be spent describing their issues to new members (using pie charts), and promoting Sustaining Membership. JOB JOB has organized a Leadership Council, which is building toward a major public meeting, tentatively scheduled for October 30. After taking some time to re-group, re-evaluate and focus on training and core team building, the Public Meeting will be a sort of grand re-emergence of JOB, with new members and new issues. After having had more than 150 people for a forum on Youth issues, JOB is looking to come up with a more concrete issue. They are actively recruiting young people to be part of the Youth Task Force, which is looking at more opportunities for youth, as well as on providing leadership development for them. JOB has Task Forces that are also working on Criminal Justice issues, as well as Health Care. ESTHER ESTHER leaders have just completed a very, very intense and thorough process of planning and writing as they have assembled the most complex grant application I have ever seen from one of our local organizations. The Fox Valley Community Foundation will entertain a proposal from ESTHER that would be sufficient (along with dues and fundraising) for them to hire a full-time organizer for the next three years. The proposal needed to include a “business plan” – including goals and plans for recruiting, leadership development, each issue area, finance and fundraising, etc. – for three years! ESTHER leaders have agreed to let others see their work, which might inspire similar strategic planning in other organizations. ESTHER is planning its Public Meeting for the evening of October 11. Congressmen Kagen and Petri have already both indicated their intention to be there. CUSH Our Kenosha County organization has decided to take a half-step back to re-group. Leaders in CUSH have felt like, in some ways, their organization got “stuck.” In part, this may have been because the issues they were working on sort of stalled. For example, they worked very hard to get a commitment from the City and the County to support the establishment of a permanent shelter for the homeless. After winning that commitment, though, the matter of the shelter got bogged down in a lot of detail. On the one hand, CUSH didn’t want to drop the issue without actually seeing a shelter go up. On the other hand, it is hard to maintain a lot of interest in watching people go to lots and lots of committee meetings. CUSH is moving toward getting itself re-organized. Many of the member congregations have affirmed that they want to stay involved and to re-build the organization. AMOS AMOS held its first Issues Assembly on May 8. They chose three issues. They will work on TIP/Incarceration, on Food/Homeless Issues (that is, the issues that most immediately affect the people who attend their meal programs and food pantries), and on Health Care. In addition, two of the Core Teams have announced their intentions to pursue issues. St. Paul Lutheran Church’s Hmong congregation will address some matters that are specific to the Hmong community. Trinity Lutheran intends to address some program inequities that affect Special Needs students at a local school. Curtis Miller has begun a leave of absence from his position as AMOS President, to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. He has decided to run for the State Assembly (so, presumably, he is hoping that this leave will be permanent!). For the time being, Mike Brown has agreed to step in as interim President. Wausau You have probably heard that the May 15 TIP Forum went quite well. We had 120 people in attendance. About 8 different religious congregations – Catholic, Protestant and Jewish – took part. The speakers were well prepared and had real, helpful things to say. And, we were generally quite disciplined about time and staying on point. About 20 new people said they would join us for the next organizing meeting on the 28th. About 10 others said they want to be part of this, but they have conflicts on that evening. Judge John Perlich, our keynote speaker, was also on a very popular radio program, along with the County Administrator and the District Attorney, just before the forum. So, the TIP message got out even more widely. Rev. Joe Jackson and Ken Hall accompanied Rev. Ellwanger and me for the event – so people got a little better sense of who we are. Rev. Ellwanger will be joining the Wausau group for their next meeting on the 28th. That will be an important meeting to figure out how to build the TIP movement in Wausau. We also hope, of course, that they will eventually decide they’d like to form a local WISDOM group. Rev. Robert L. Harris On May 7, Rev. Robert L. Harris passed away. Until he died, Rev. Harris was the pastor at Tabernacle Community Baptist Church in Milwaukee. Rev. Harris was WISDOM’s first President, and before that he had been the President of MICAH. His funeral on May 14 was one of the most moving and beautiful services I have ever attended. Though he was gone, you could feel his spirit in every song, prayer and testimonial. He was a much-loved and much-appreciated man. Everyone recalled that Rev. Harris had a great smile, a hearty laugh and a terrific sense of humor. Those things were a sort of trademark that he stamped on everything he did in MICAH and WISDOM. It was fun to be with Rev. Harris. We also recalled that he could be very business-like. Whether it was Bible study at Tabernacle or a WISDOM Executive Committee meeting, he let you know this was important and that it would be done right. You didn’t need to worry about meetings running overtime when Rev. Harris was in the chair. I will most remember Rev. Harris for his real care and concern for people. I certainly felt it personally. He was able to focus on the other person in a very genuine way. I mentioned at the service that he was the same with everyone. He never seemed to be intimidated by the “important” people he dealt with, and he never seemed to feel that anyone was his inferior. He just saw everyone as a fellow child of God. Rev. Harris was very sick for the past few years, mostly with complications of diabetes. So, it was hard for him to be present with us at WISDOM or MICAH gatherings. Still, I believe WISDOM owes him a great debt of gratitude. I know I do.
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WISDOM is a regional organization
seeking justice and
common good in Wisconsin. |
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WISDOM Executive Director Report