UUCSJ Seminary Intern Josh Leach

UUCSJ Seminary Intern Josh Leach

This post was written by Josh Leach, seminary intern for UUCSJ.

Hi! My name is Josh Leach and I’m excited to be joining UUCSJ this year as a ministerial intern. I’ll be helping to add to our existing Study Guide and curricular materials, to build a networking platform for our program alums, and to assist with the new SALT program we’re helping to launch in partnership with UU Mass Action. I have a cubicle on the third floor, the walls of which render me invisible to passers-by, but please don’t let that stop you from seeking me out if you need anything or want to chat!

I’m coming to UUCSJ as a part of the “field education” component of my Master of Divinity degree, for which I’m studying at Harvard Divinity School. I hope to pursue a career in ordained UU ministry after I graduate, with a focus on advocacy and public witness. Before coming to HDS, I was a college student at the University of Chicago, where I learned a lot about history and developed a healthy impatience with reality.

The call to ministry was a bit of a foregone conclusion for me, I’m afraid. I was born and raised as a committed UU, and grew up attending services at the Horizon Church in Dallas, TX and the UU Church of Sarasota, FL. Both places taught me to have a strong appreciation for the value and, well, distinctiveness of our religious tradition. Whether I was attending a pagan wedding at Horizon in the heart of Bible-belt Texas, or phone-banking in support of marriage equality with other UUCS folks in the midst of conservative Florida, I learned to take pride early on in the fact that ours is still a community of heretics—and that being such a community takes courage.

I’m thrilled to be sharing the next nine months with everyone at UUCSJ and look forward to working together to put UU values into practice in the world. To paraphrase Monty Python, I hope to be convicted on two counts of heresy this year: heresy by thought and heresy by action!

UUCSJ Seminary Intern Tim DeChristopher

UUCSJ Seminary Intern Tim DeChristopher

This post was written by Tim DeChristopher, seminary intern for UUCSJ.

I’m Tim DeChristopher, and I’m excited to be joining the team at the UU College of Social Justice.  I am currently a student at Harvard Divinity School, where I am pursuing my Masters of Divinity to become a UU minister.  My field education project this year will be working with the UUCSJ to help organize Commit2Respond, a joint program with the UUA and the UUSC that will focus on climate justice in the spring of 2015.

Prior to entering Harvard Divinity School, I spent several years working on climate justice with Peaceful Uprising in Salt Lake City, Utah.  That organization grew out of my act of civil disobedience of disrupting a Bureau of Land Management oil and gas auction in 2008.  I eventually served two years in federal prison for that action, and I was released in April of 2013.  That chapter of my life was documented in the film “Bidder70.”  I’m still working for climate justice while continually deepening my understanding of the intersectionality of oppressive structures.

This week I’ll be in Fall River, MA supporting two activists who are standing trial for using their lobster boat to blockade a shipment of West Virginia coal from being delivered to the Brayton Point power plant.  They will be making the case that they had a necessity to act to prevent the harm of climate change, and Bill McKibben and James Hansen will be taking the stand to help make the case.

The Commit2Respond program will be an effort to unify and propel the work that UUs and congregations are already doing on climate change. As part of the Commit2Respond program, we’re hoping to have a training next summer that launches a Climate Justice Organizers Core of committed and trained activists that are embedded in congregations around the country, and my efforts will be focused on that part of the project.  I look forward to bringing the UUCSJ’s focus on social justice into the struggle for climate justice.

Reflections on the Haiti Eco-Villages

This post was written by UUSC staff member Jessica Atcheson and was originally published on UUSC’s website.

When I tell people I’ve been to Haiti, their voices often shift to a register of sadness and pity. They say, “Oh, it’s so sad, the situation there.” They say, “Is there really any good that can be done?” This always disorients me. I know the people of Haiti face huge challenges, but overwhelmingly my experience of the country and its people is one of hope, of strength, of transformation.

Three years ago, fellow UUSC-UUA service-learning participants and I worked with the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP) to lay the foundation of the first house of the first eco-village, a joint project of UUSC and MPP, in the country’s rural Central Plateau. When I returned this past May on a journey with the UU College of Social Justice, I was heartened by the progress and was fired up once again by the fierce commitment to justice of the social movement these villages are rooted in.

PHYSICAL PROGRESS

The most tangible signs of progress in the eco-villages are physical: sturdy homes, flourishing gardens, growing tree nurseries, solar power setups, community gathering spaces. Where there was once just a lone house foundation, there are now complete villages — MPP was nearing completion of the sixth eco-village in May as we helped sift sand, move rocks, and hand lumber to skilled roofers.

Each village is home to 10 families who have started new lives as small farmers after being displaced from Port-au-Prince by the 2010 earthquake. With six villages — two made possible by UUSC and the other four funded by the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance — in place, 60 families have shelter and the means to feed themselves and generate sustainable livelihoods.

One of the most exciting things about this project is that it establishes a successful holistic model that can be replicated throughout the countryside. And it’s a model that puts power squarely in the hands of the peasants — a word that MPP members have reclaimed for themselves as small rural farmers. As Philfrant St. Naré, manager of MPP’s community animators (MPP’s version of community organizers), told us, “We want peasants to have control over what they produce. We want to build a government that takes care of peasants and everyone else, too. We want to build a Haiti that is self-sufficient.”

SOVEREIGNTY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Sovereignty and environmental sustainability are bedrock principles embedded in everything that MPP does — and it starts with food. “I can spend a week in the same clothes, but I can’t go a week without food,” says Paul Muler, the MPP agronomist and community animator who was our main host this past trip. That is why MPP is, at its core, a collection of farming cooperatives called gwoupman, all of which receive support and training from MPP agronomists. MPP’s approach is “agriculture that respects the earth, the air, and the people,” as Muler says, and they use organic, sustainable farming methods.

After the 2010 earthquake, along with the influx of international assistance came the advice and directives for recovery. When UUSC began working with MPP in 2010, it approached the grassroots group as an eye-to-eye partner. As St. Naré, who has worked with MPP for 25 years, said to us, “NGOs need to ask what we need and not tell us what we need. Instead of giving us food, help us produce our own food.” Aware of the importance of Haitians leading the recovery in ways that support their own vision, UUSC asked questions, listened to the answers, and helped MPP hone plans for how they would like to move forward and support families in the wake of the earthquake — and that’s how the first eco-village was born.

COMMUNITY POWER

The eco-villages are about more than farming and food, though; they are about community connections and power, about social change, about justice. This was driven home to me over and over again as we spoke with MPP members. MPP traces the connections between the many forms of oppression experienced in Haiti.

“You can’t be free if the person next to you isn’t free,” Muler reminded us. MPP was founded more than 40 years ago — it now counts a nationwide membership of more than 60,000 — and has been living this concept out each step along the way. As they recognize the ways that a history of slavery, occupation, and international interference has disempowered their nation, they recognize the ways that ruling elites in Port-au-Prince have disenfranchised the peasants in the countryside.

WOMEN’S EQUALITY

MPP also recognizes the ways that women have been oppressed, and empowering women is integral to the changes MPP is working to make reality. “To fight the exploitation that men and women experience, we must first fight men’s domination of women,” St. Naré told us. Article 13 of MPP’s bylaws prioritizes equality between men and women.

MPP’s commitment to gender equity shows up in so many ways: their zero-tolerance policy for domestic violence among their members, their prioritization of education for girls and adult literacy for women, and their understanding of the link between education and economic empowerment for a brighter future for girls and women. Women serve in a variety of MPP roles, from doctors to agronomists to the director of their cooperative bank.

Giselaine Saint Fleur, an animator and the coordinator of MPP’s 2,000 women’s gwoupman, shared: “My wish for all women is that we be able to take our destiny in our own hands.” The same could be said about MPP’s wish for all peasants, for all Haitians.

POWER, STRENGTH, AND RESILIENCE

So when people say to me, “Oh, it’s so sad, the situation there,” I say: “The challenges that Haiti faces are big and hard and sad — but to leave it at that ignores the strength of Haitians who are actively surviving, actively creating positive change, actively making progress.”

When people say to me, “Is there really any good that can be done?” I say: “Absolutely. There is so much good that already is being done — and is being led by the Haitian people. And we have an important role to play in supporting their vision and moving it forward.”

Then I continue: I tell them about MPP, about Muler, about St. Naré, about Saint Fleur. I tell them about Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the founder of MPP. I tell them about the song, “Ann Makonnen Fos Nou” (“Let’s Intertwine Our Strengths Together”), that Muler taught us during this last trip. I tell them about the green peppers growing in container gardens and the fresh mangoes. I tell them about the soil I mixed according to the agronomist’s directions (three parts soil, two parts manure, one part sand) and poured into small bags to grow tree saplings; I handed them off to Cassandra, a resident of the second village who we worked alongside at the on-site tree nursery there. I tell them about power, strength, and resilience — of the people I met, of the communities I worked in, of the movement I witnessed.