The following post was written by Kara Smith, UUSC’s associate for grassroots mobilization.
UUSC is all geared up to host a dedicated group of UU College of Social Justice Haiti program alumni in Washington, D.C., for an upcoming lobby day! April 6–8 is going to be an exciting three days full of training, conversation, and legislative advocacy.
As UUSC’s associate for grassroots mobilization, I’m thrilled to report that 25 service-learning trip alumni and community members from nine states and the District of Columbia will be convening on Capitol Hill to speak up for a just recovery in Haiti. They will team up with two representatives from the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP): Mulaire Michel, an agronomist, and Philefrant St. Nare, a leader of popular education.
Plus they’ll be joined by UUSC Haiti Program Manager Wendy Flick, who will have just returned from MPP’s 40th anniversary celebration; Evan Seitz, UUCSJ’s senior associate for service-learning programs; and Shelley Moskowitz, UUSC’s manager of public policy and mobilization. And I’ll be there, too!
Together, we will advocate on behalf of the men, women, and children who are slowly rebuilding their lives after the most devastating natural disaster in Haitian history. We will urge our policy makers to be accountable and transparent about the progress that is or is not being made in the reconstruction process.
The goals for the weekend include the following:
Share firsthand experience of Haiti with our legislators
Support the Assessing Progress in Haiti Act, which asks for accountability and transparency about how relief funding is being spent in Haiti
Ensure the inclusion of Haitian civil society in the recovery efforts as well as special protections for vulnerable populations
Keep the recovery in Haiti on the radar of our policy makers
The alumni’s experience, dedication, and commitment are valuable resources. They have witnessed the resilience and innovation of the Haiti people firsthand and have been part of creating a sustainable recovery by working on the ground to build the first eco-village with MPP. And they will be translating that experience into further effective action as we meet with members of Congress.
Stay tuned for an update and more on how you too can help spread this message!
The following post was written by Rosie Cohen, age 17. A student at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., Cohen was a participant in the 2012 UUCSJ summer youth program.
A few days into my week at UUCSJ’s National Youth Justice Summit (NYJS), we were all gathered for a leadership training session that, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t completely excited about. We had all spent the last few days in intense workshops and stimulating meditations — generally, activities that I felt passionate about. I didn’t think something called leadership training would bring out any of my passions for social justice.
I was wrong. In fact, this was probably one of the most exciting parts of the week for me, because suddenly everything turned real. By the time we’d finished with the leadership workshop, I had this amazing rush as I realized that I was gearing up to go home and take with me tools, support, and confidence to start my own social justice undertaking. We practiced networking skills and setting goals, and we started to think about what kinds of things we were all going to focus on when we got home.
The hopes and dreams I have for my social justice work are widely spread over many issues that are all close to my heart, and at times, though exciting, these hopes and dreams can be overwhelming and seem even unreasonable. Because of NYJS, I was able to hone in on a couple of issues that I care deeply about and focus on making real change. I remember sitting on a hill at Boston Common in the sun, starting to think about the prospect of doing something real for my community. If the idea of taking on a project scared me, I would think back to the multitudes of support that I received from my peers at NYJS as well as our amazing advisors and presenters during the week.
As of now, I’m starting to put together my project. I am creating a young girls’ empowerment group at an elementary school in my neighborhood. The group will meet regularly for the rest of the 2013 school year and focus on media literacy, women’s history, and feminism. I am still in planning stages, but I already have support from parents, and a good number of kids have started to sign up. I sought out a local organization that I wanted to be involved in my project, and now I have more support than ever. Without all the knowledge I gained during NYJS, along with the teeming encouragement from everyone there, I probably wouldn’t have the motivation to take on anything. My week in Boston was totally life changing. If you have the opportunity to go to one of the 2013 programs, I highly recommend it!
The following post was written by Elizabeth Nguyen, a program leader of the 2012 UUCSJ summer youth training. Nguyen will be leading the 2013 Boston Youth Justice Training, which will take place June 30–July 21.
On July 11, partway into last year’s youth justice program, our group packed up our sunscreen and water bottles from our home base in Boston’s historic Beacon Hill neighborhood and boarded a bus for Roxbury.
We had spent days packed full of rich experience: interactive, intensive learning; evening worships that found us building altars in our common space, walking silently through the city, and singing by the Charles River; moments of laughter playing games on the Boston Common and having an impromptu dance party; sharing our life stories through drawing; and immersing ourselves in questions of economic justice, learning from partners at UUSC and from young people at the Roxbury Youth Program. Now we were headed to meet with our partners at Haley House.
We’d learned about the housing discrimination that formed the foundations for the housing segregation we live today. We’d learned about the restaurant industry and the labor movement and organizations like the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United that are working to bring the two together. We’d learned a lot about why economic inequity exists and how it’s intertwined with race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Now we were off to encounter the economic inequality that is the reality in our world. We spent that sunny July day scraping paint in preparation for a new coat at the Haley House’s South End community kitchen followed by justice walking tour of Boston. The participants were delving into issues of gentrification, urban violence, and institutional racism. And they could see it — in the dwindling number of trash cans as we walked from the South End of Boston into the historically African American Roxbury neighborhood, in the increasing number of pawn shops and empty storefronts.
And then we felt it in our hearts as we encountered the beginnings of a vigil held for teen Lance Hartgrove, who had been killed in a stabbing the day before. As a ministerial student and a staff member at the summit, I’d led the group in conversation after hearing about Lance’s death. I wanted them to know the depth of tragedy, the loss that is real, that doesn’t happen out there in some anonymous city, but happens right here — in our cities. And also didn’t want our group of UUs, most with much economic and race privilege, to see Roxbury just as violence or grief. I didn’t want to perpetuate the media’s sensationalism, didn’t want to be any more complicit in a world that “others” crime and sees it as brown and black and young and male and gangs and robberies — not as white and white collar and rich and banks and lobbyists, the military-industrial complex, drones, and the murder that is the death penalty.
This is our world: broken, bleeding. And our religion as Unitarian Universalists calls us, not to turn away from the suffering, not to drive through Roxbury on our way to yet another suburb — but to love.
And I don’t mean easy love — smiling on the street, being kind to a neighbor. I mean the love that says both I won’t turn away from suffering and also I will know that it’s not enough to love without skill and action. Love calls me to get ready. To get trained. To learn about systems of class, race, gender, and heterosexism. Love asks me that I figure out what it means to receive the unearned privilege of these systems and what it means to be oppressed by these systems. Love asks me to learn the skills for making justice: facilitation, relationship building, teaching, listening, and writing. And it asks me to practice them. To practice them and to use them. And to do it out of love, as if our world depends on it. Because, yes, it does.
If you are a high school youth, you are already creating the world. You may be throwing your heart and hands against it and bending the arc of it ever more toward justice. You may be staring down at your hands, at your community, brokenhearted by the injustices. You may be watching on, feeling helpless to change anything. You may be torn, trying to give time toward causes that matter to you and also wanting to pursue the things that nurture your spirit: sports and friends, college and family.
Wherever you are in your journey as a teen, the Boston Youth Justice Training — learning, spirituality, community, and action — will get you ready. Join us!
Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, founder and executive director of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), a UUSC partner in Haiti, has a favorite saying: “Men anpil chay pa lou” (in English: “Many hands make the burden light”). From its humble but determined beginnings in 1973 through its growth to an organization with more than 61,000 members throughout the country, MPP has been on a mission of social change. MPP strives to empower Haitian peasants through community organizing and education, protecting the environment, revitalizing organic agriculture, and increasing access to alternative energies — and this week (March 17–23), they celebrate 40 years of this essential work.
To mark the occasion, MPP is convening a congress of 1,000 member delegates from all over Haiti. The gathering’s theme, MPP: 40 Years Later — A Sovereign MPP within a Sovereign Haiti, highlights a goal they are continually striving for: sovereignty. The week will include a thorough review and update of organizational priorities, strategic planning for the next five years, and a march for national sovereignty on March 22. They expect at least 20,000 people to participate in the march.
The foundation of MPP’s work is a model of popular education, adapted from the work of Paulo Freire, that fosters individual and collective empowerment through community dialogue. MPP creates intentional collective working groups called gwoupman, comprised of approximately 15 members each, to take on projects such as sustainable cultivation of a piece of land, production of solar panels, or the raising of livestock. Over the years, MPP has trained over 1,000 community organizers (they call them “animators”) to work with the various groups throughout Haiti.
Jean-Baptiste reports that a new organizational priority likely to emerge from the discussions held during the congress will be adult literacy. MPP members are saying that illiteracy is a major factor that keeps them, especially the women and girls among them, on the margins of Haitian society. As in many countries in the Global South, illiteracy tends to be linked with gender and the right to water — girls are often denied education because their days are spent carrying water for their families. MPP has an ongoing water program to address access to clean water by constructing wells and cisterns that gather roof runoff.
The congress will also highlight the eco-village project, a joint venture of MPP and UUSC that has created a model of sustainable living for people displaced in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. UUSC has been heavily involved with this project from the start, funding two of six villages and, through the UU College of Social Justice, sending ten groups of service-learning volunteers to help construct the villages. Ten families moved into the first completed village in December 2011. After the completion of the sixth village in 2014, the cluster of villages will make up a community large enough to have a school and clinic. The model includes alternative technologies such as solar well pumps for potable water and irrigation, alternative charcoal created from agricultural waste products, and innovative agricultural techniques that are ripe for replication throughout the country.
Following the congress, representatives from MPP will travel to Washington, D.C., to join with several alumni of service-learning trips to educate members of the U.S. Congress about the realities on the ground in Haiti. They will share their experiences and knowledge about successful models of recovery such as the eco-village while emphasizing the importance of including the voices of Haitian civil society in the conversation about Haitian reconstruction.
