|
WHAT IS ISAIAH?
ISAIAH is people of faith acting powerfully in the world, casting a stirring
vision of a vital faith community that has the courage to declare, commit and
act upon a set of values. Those values will transform the dominant culture of
despair, scarcity and fear, replacing it with a vision of community, hope and
God’s abundance for all people.
 As
we look around us, we see the politics of scarcity corroding our communities,
creating a sense of deep isolation and fear. Fear drives us to perpetuate a
world of racial and economic inequality. As we disinvest in our communities, we
are wedged apart from one another. This breakdown of community values is
causing a growing gap between the rich and the poor, disinvestment in the future
of our children as we abandon our public education system, erosion of civil and
human rights for ALL people regardless of race, culture or immigration status.
The politics of scarcity drives us to abandon the values we hold as people of
faith and as citizens of this democracy.
However, when we
look to our history as people of faith and at the history of people acting for
justice in America, we see that there have been many times when ordinary people
have stood together to make profound changes for the common good of all
people. We know that through powerful collective and democratic action, with
our faith in God’s abundance and a message of hope we can transform our present
reality.
ISAIAH is a collective of people of faith, working together
ISAIAH is a collection of congregations who have committed themselves to each
other in order to build power for a worldview that prioritizes racial and
economic justice. Easy words, a very challenging reality. Challenging because
the idea of creating community with one another, especially on a grand scale, is
profoundly counter-cultural in America. And challenging because it is difficult
to build all the bridges necessary to craft one organization out of the
interests of new immigrants and old ones; city-dwellers
and suburbanites; activists and people for whom acting in the public arena is
new.
ISAIAH is way of living the faith
ISAIAH is also a vehicle for the practice of a very
specific methodology through which people can build the power necessary –
individually, and as a collective -- to see their values realized in the world.
It is a set of attitudes and disciplines that are communicated through intensive
training and practice. Attitudes about the importance of the work of the church,
of acting with integrity, of being accountable to our commitments and holding
others accountable, and of honesty with one another. Disciplines about prayer,
building relationships, running effective meetings, mentoring others, and doing
strategic planning. These are some examples of the attitudes and disciplines at
the core of ISAIAH.
ISAIAH is part of a national movement
ISAIAH is one of 60 similar organizations around the
country affiliated with the Gamaliel Foundation in Chicago. Our national network
provides training and resources for organizing far beyond what we would have
available doing this work by ourselves. It also gives us a national powerbase to
influence federal legislation on immigration, transportation, and housing. In
fact, just last year Gamaliel leaders gathered and chose "The Civil Rights of
Immigrants" as our first national issue campaign. Immigrant leaders from
Minnesota meet and talk regularly with immigrant leaders from other Gamaliel
projects and other organizations nationally to coordinate their actions toward
the passage of federal policy.
Getting things done on the national level
In the spring of 2003, ISAIAH leaders helped organize
a meeting with Congressman Martin Sabo, at which he committed to co-sponsor the
Student Adjustment Act. On July 1st, Representative Betty McCollum
met with ISAIAH members and committed to becoming the second Minnesota sponsor,
after months of relationship-building and meetings with ISAIAH leaders. Rep. Jim
Ramstad is also considering sponsoring the Act, as a result of the same kind of
careful organizing by ISAIAH leaders in his district.
Rep. Ramstad also announced at an ISAIAH public meeting in June that he would
sign on as a co-sponsor of the National Housing Trust Fund Act, a bill he had
dismissed until he was asked by ISAIAH leaders in his district to take another
look. Last year the National Housing Trust Fund lost by only one vote in
Congress. This bill is important as the most feasible federal policy to provide
significant, new resources for affordable housing.
Getting things done at the state level
ISAIAH congregations have worked at the state level
too, on a bill which would require most new housing to include a percentage of
units affordable to those with moderate and low incomes. This "Inclusionary
Housing" policy would make the creation of affordable housing part of the
private housing market, and facilitate the building of thousands more affordable
units. A number of congregations have worked on this bill, with key leadership
coming from St. Joan of Arc and St. Luke Catholic churches.
Getting things done at the local level
Many congregations, however, don’t work at the federal
or state level. A few examples of local work from the last two years include:
- The passage of a Joint Powers Agreement between the city of St. Cloud and
its four surrounding cities, to make inclusionary housing part of development
efforts in those communities. The St. Cloud members of ISAIAH won an award
from the MN Housing Finance Agency this year for their phenomenal success in
this very challenging effort.
- Cathedral of St. Paul's success in winning city approval for Catholic
Charities’ to build affordable housing at Guild Hall.
- Lakeview Lutheran's campaign to create inclusionary housing on the last
large parcel of undeveloped land in Maplewood.
- Peace Lutheran's campaign to pass an inclusionary housing policy in Inver
Grove Heights.
- St. Joseph the Worker’s campaign to increase the supply of affordable
housing in Maple Grove.
- St. Matthew's Lutheran's successful campaign to close down a drug house in
their St. Paul neighborhood.
- St. Luke's campaign to get a domestic violence audit of the criminal
justice system in St. Paul.
- Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran's campaign in support of amending a
discriminatory parking ban at Como Park during the Hmong Sports Festival.
- Participation of Zion Baptist, St. Philips, St. John's Episcopal, St.
Bridget's, and St. Joan in the campaign led by MICAH for a Minneapolis Housing
Trust Fund.
- The "Holy Ground" campaigns being launched right now by numerous
congregations to do neighborhood visits and house meetings to build deep
connections to residents and institutions in their neighborhoods, and identify
shared concerns upon which to act.
Leadership and Congregational Development
Some ISAIAH member congregations use their membership
primarily for leadership and congregational development. These congregations
regularly send people to the Gamaliel Weeklong Training. They schedule trainings
on Effective Meetings, Strategic Planning, One-to-one Listening Visits, and
Doing a Door-to-Door Neighborhood Outreach. Very often they undertake these
efforts in partnership with other ISAIAH congregations and other congregations
in their neighborhoods.
Leaders receive specific mentoring at trainings, but also in community with
one another. Some ISAIAH pastors attend their own Leadership Development table,
founded by Fr. John Estrem from the Cathedral, at which they share monthly
workplans and challenge each other to be more effective leaders. There are
similar Leadership Development tables for lay leaders.
Immigration and the Northwestern suburbs: The power of the collective
Sometimes, congregations get turned on by issues and
approaches that defy all the stereotypes of their natural interests. Three
congregations from Maple Grove, Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center have done just
that, in a powerful anti-racism effort that beautifully complements the work of
immigrant congregations within ISAIAH. Folks from St. Joseph the Worker, St.
Alphonsus, and St. Gerard’s Catholic Churches decided to add immigration issues
to their social justice agenda, and have met with dozens of businesspeople in
their communities who employ undocumented immigrant workers. They have organized
some of these businesspeople to tell their stories to MN Congressional leaders.
This is hard, hard work. Businesspeople will express their concerns to us in
private, but shy away from talking with politicians because they don’t want to
attract the attention of the INS. Ever so carefully, ISAIAH trained leaders in
the northwestern suburbs have created relationships of trust and a relatively
safe process for businesspeople to say directly to our Congressional leaders,
"Hey, I’m dependent on these undocumented workers, and the harder it gets for
them to stay in this country, the harder it is for me to maintain my company.
Why doesn’t Congress create a path for these workers to be legalized?"
The Brownfields Story: the power of the collective
Several years ago, ISAIAH leaders organized an effort
to leverage money for the clean-up of brownfields, polluted toxic sites in
developed communities – over 3,000 acres of land that couldn’t be used because
it was too expensive for any city to clean up by itself. Leaders in ISAIAH
member congregations organized the passage of a bill that committed $68 million
toward the clean-up of Minnesota’s brownfields. To put that in perspective,
the state had previously only been spending $7.5 million on brownfields. In
fact, the federal government had less than $68 million budgeted for all
brownfield efforts in the country! Real, comprehensive, systemic change can’t
happen just at the local level or by individuals or congregations acting alone.
That $68 million is still being spent, and as of today has helped create over
10,000 living-wage jobs in Minnesota. The ISAIAH leaders who made
this happen learned a lot and are very proud. And we had a heck of a lot of fun
in the process. We participated in a hearing at which "Moses" parted the "sea of
red tape." We delivered bags of dirt with recipes attached for legislators to
"turn polluted dirt into paydirt." We held a press conference at which
congregants in nuclear waste suits stood in a dump truck of dirt and unearthed
"paychecks" representing the positive fiscal impact of brownfield redevelopment.
And we organized city managers from around the state to come to the capitol and
lobby on behalf of this effort for all of Minnesota.
Why we need ISAIAH now, more than ever
People who
care about the common good and about God’s call find that our values are under
serious assault. The only way to build a just community is to deepen our efforts
to organize together. The members of ISAIAH believe they are called to play a
powerful role in determining the future of our local communities, our state and
our country and that it is time to reclaim our prophetic and public voice for
racial and economic justice.
|
|
