Before You Speak

At Aberdeen’s city council meeting on June 29, 2016, a group of business owners issued a “vote of no confidence” in the mayor and city council members. Their complaint: homeless people. There was the litany of usual complaints: people sleeping in doorways, business owners feeling unsafe, the situation being bad for business.

Last year, a city official publically called people who were homeless a “public nuisance” and a business owner speaking in a public meeting said he wished “druggies would all just die.” Another property owner privately threatened to shoot people camping on his property and “throw them in the river.”

Facebook is usually full of unkind and sometimes very nasty comments on local sites. Here are a few I found from over the past few years:

“They [hotel owners] don't appreciate the riff riff any more than the Court of Public Opinion.”

“How about we send the homeless people to Olympia or Tacoma or seattle, where they have more possibilities for rehab and jobs, why are they our responsibility, just sayin.”

“they need to do something. These people have taken over whole neighborhoods. They harass people, threaten them, steal from them, and throw trash/drug par. all over the place”

“Load them up on a bus and take them on that new highway to "no where", a trip to Wynochee Dam. Last stop, kick off by gun point if need be. leave them 2-2 liters of Mountain Dew and a pack of Paul Malls. then leave, we'll see how many of them know how to read signs....let the Feds take care of them or the wolves.....”

Everyone seems to think it is perfectly ok to call people “tweakers,” “druggies,” “dope fiends,” and worse.

No one seems to notice that the people that are targeted in these comments are, for the most part, sons and daughters of the harbor. That many of the people who find themselves homeless now once helped build the community. Or even that they are simply fellow human beings struggling to survive with the rest of us.

“The Court of Public Opinion” in this small town on the edge of the state has grown tired, jaded, and cruel.

If these were all just people blowing hot air, maybe I’d think better of writing this post. But, there is a problem.

We seem to have forgotten that words have consequences. Real, and sometimes dire, consequences.

Because of words like these—from the mouths of public officials, respected community members, and just your average Joe blowing steam on facebook--people on the street are continually targeted.

Last week, a few local kids decided to go “bum bashing” in the middle of the night. Among others, they terrorized a woman sleeping alone in a tent, calling her cruel names, kicking her little puppy, and breaking her tent down.

While tent city has been in Hoquiam, they have had rocks thrown at them and trucks drive up and shout obscenities and threats. A small vigilante group has stalked women walking alone at night and generally harassed people. 

Last year, Public Health declined to offer naloxone (a drug that reverses the effect of opiate overdose) to the public because they were too afraid of public backlash, even though the rate of opiate overdose in this county is twice the rate of the state. So, we as a community decided we would rather let our young people die than stir the pot.

So, when I read all these nasty comments, I think of the terror, the pain, the death that real people in our community face because "the Court of Public Opinion" calls them riff raff, thinks of them as non human, and sometimes openly calls for their death. Next time, before you speak, know that people’s lives hang in the balance. And maybe remember words spoken a few thousand years ago; "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (Matthew 7:2).

State of the Streets

Thursday, July 14, we held an event in Westport, our second State of the Streets, where we invited members of our community to share their stories of struggle and hope. These were my opening remarks:

Welcome to State of the Streets!

So, why are we here? I’d say we are here for three reasons:

First, because we have been talking a lot about Jesus and the Jesus movement. We have been talking a lot of about how, two thousand years ago, Jesus began a movement among poor and homeless people. How he said he had come to bring liberation to the oppressed. How he gathered up the battered and burdened and he built a movement with them. How he told them they would save the world.

In the 21^st century, we sometimes think of Jesus like the pictures we see of him on the internet. But the Jesus of the gospels was a man who grew up poor in Galilee, in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Who was friends with tax collectors and sex workers. Who was arrested himself, jailed, and eventually executed, giving his life, as he put it, “for his friends”. In other words, Jesus went through what many of us go through in poor communities.

Second, because movements begin with the telling of untold stories. Last time we held this event, people got up and told powerful stories. They talked about what it was like in this community to experience homelessness, to experience poverty, to struggle with the health care system, to be in jail, to be mistreated by police. Our stories are not usually heard. Too often, these stories are never told. It can be scary to speak up. But tonight, you are here to be heard.

All of you who are here to speak, all of you who have told your stories, all of you who struggle so hard to survive here in Grays Harbor, you are my heroes. I am honored to know you. We see your courage. We see your faith in the hard times. We see your longing for a better world. Thank you for telling your stories. Thank you for believing that another world is possible.

Third, because we want to talk from this place, at this time. We at Chaplains on the Harbor have been open here in Westport for a year and a half. We got permission to use this abandoned church building to open a community center and a worshiping center. In the last year and half, we have come together as a community. We have fed each other, and shared with each other, and learned to love each other. We haven’t done any of that perfectly. But we are learning. Here in Westport, we are taking a stand—in a little town in the middle of nowhere, we are trying to live the Jesus movement. 71% of our people are unemployed or out of the workforce—some of us retired, many of us just unable to find a job, many of us disabled. We are struggling to make ends meet, struggling to survive, and sometimes we are tired of it.

I want to say this and I want to say it loud and clear. What is happening in our communities is not ok. It is not ok for our disabled elders to sleep on the street. It is not ok that there are not enough jobs for our young people. It is not ok that people can barely survive and go hungry. It is not ok that there are immigration raids on our Latino brothers and sisters and families are split up. It is not ok that a young man I know was recently beat up by police and then, yesterday, when police came to arrest him, they threatened to sic dogs on him. This is not ok. It is not ok that we have the highest rate of juvenile detention for non-criminal offences in the country, here in GHC. It is not ok that we are living—in the richest country in the history of the world—we are living in dire poverty. This is a sin against God. It is not ok. 

And you—you who have come to speak, you who live with so much poverty and so much struggle—you can and you will save us. Your courage to tell your stories is a first step toward demanding real change. We really can dream of a better world. We really can come together—if we can find ways to come together as a community—to build a better Grays Harbor, a better nation, a better world. But we can only do it together. We can only do it if we listen to each other across all the lines that divide us—lines of race, lines of politics, lines of hatred, lines of language, lines of religion. Only if we learn to love each other—not in a sappy, emotional way, but in a way that protects each other and cares for each other.

I am so proud of all you. So proud to be your pastor. So proud to be part of this community. So proud to stand with you all today.

Liberation on the Harbor

"Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"

170 years ago, Fredrick Douglas spoke those words on the 4^th of July. He spoke 10 years before the abolition of slavery, as a black man, to a group of women abolitionists in the north. He spoke during a time when about 15% of the American population was enslaved. He, a former slave himself, partnered with courageous people like Harriet Tubman and others to free his people.

This is a time of year in our nation where we talk a lot about freedom. When we quote the declaration of independence that says that all men are created equal and deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In the passage we just read, as Jesus spells out his mission, his work, as Jesus delivers his first sermon in his hometown, Jesus talks about liberation, about being free.

He came to…

Preach good news to the poor

The announce freedom to prisoners

To heal and restore sight to the blind

And to “set the oppressed free”, or as the version we read this morning says, “to set the burdened and the battered free.”

The words that strike me most, in my work in this place, is that last phrase. “To set the burdened and the battered free.” That of course was the dream of Fredrick Douglas when he set out to free his people. It is my dream too.

I see a lot of battered bodies and burdened hearts on the harbor. I too long for the liberation of our people.

And I think about what Jesus did. He gathered up the battered and burdened and he built a movement with them. He told them they would save the world. And he told the religious leaders and the upstanding citizens to join them, to accept their leadership. That was Jesus’ good news.

It was that movement that Jesus built that would inspire people like Fredrick Douglas years later. Perhaps that movement can still hold power now, for us, here on the harbor, here in Aberdeen.

Jesus is specific about what kind of freedom, what kind of liberation he brings. Freedom to prisoners, healing to the sick, liberation to the battered and broken. I think about the stories I hear here on the harbor every day—stories you know, stories you might live. I think about our own battered and broken people. Many of them have lost so much: family members, homes, jobs, health. We carry deep scars. We have lost children. We are in and out of jail or prison. We experience deep and constant trauma. So many of us are very young—did you know that 52% of Aberdeen is under 35?

A few months ago, we hosted an event here at Amazing Grace, offering people the chance to tell their stories. Because we believe that the building of movements begins with the telling of untold stories.

Your parish hall was packed to overflowing. We ate 80 lbs of fried chicken. And people started sharing their stories. They told about police beatings and jail stints, they told about losing children, they told about how hard it is to get jobs, they talked about daily assaults on their dignity, they talked about how hard it was to find social services, they talked about losing everything.

We clapped harder than we have ever clapped for the bravery of people telling their stories. We cried and we laughed.  In a community where nearly 50% of our people experience poverty and where almost 1500 are counted as homeless (in a rural county), this is the first time an event has been held like this. What struck me the most about this event was the amazing courage of the people I am privileged to serve and honored to know. They were my heroes—willing to tell hard stories out loud to those in power, willing to work for change at considerable risk to themselves. They dreamed of a movement. For a moment, we dreamed of freedom and liberation.

I see so much pain and trauma in this ministry, in this town, as so many of us have experienced, as people are cut off from access to basic needs and basic resources. But I also see such amazing courage. The battered and the broken, in the end, will inherit the earth as Jesus said. I see it in the courageous little family who are struggling for a decent wage job and home after piecing their life back together after baby came. I see it in the very young, very vulnerable woman trying to survive solitary confinement. I see it in a young street hustler who has lost everything and is still trying again to find a way out. I see it in the aging logger who tries to offer counseling to the young folks on the street. I see it in the elderly man who tried to offer safe haven for a young and vulnerable gay man.

There is a man in jail right now, looking forward in his life, dreaming of something new, not just for himself, but for his community. He dreams of creating jobs with a restaurant that would be open, not just for the town, but also for anyone who needed a meal. In the middle of great trauma, and so much struggle, there are dreams coming out of the jails Jesus says he came to open.

 In our community and church in Westport, aging surfers run the community garden and homeless kids cook meals for the whole community and we dream together of a better world. In the middle of a town where 71% of the adult population is either unemployed or out of the workforce, I watch people work to take care of each other. Learn to respect each other. Dream of a better world. Every Friday, we gather for our popular education program (the School of Hard Knocks) and we often skype with or exchange videos with poor people all over the country and the world—we talk with homeless organizers in Budapest and with Muslim communities in New York and homeless leaders in Salinas, CA. And we dream together.

I can’t shake off the feeling that this is the good news for the poor that Jesus is talking about. That this is what Jesus meant by building a movement of poor and desperate people, of bruised and battered people, so many years ago in Galilee.

That this is what it looks like in Aberdeen WA in 2016.

When I look over our room full of young people and elders, all struggling, all trying to survive, I think; “These people, these courageous, amazing people will save us. The church is not here to save them. They are here to save us.”

As we approach the 4^th, that holiday that we in the US talk so much about freedom and about liberty, I want to think about this liberation that Jesus brings. This good news for and by the poor. This liberation for the broken bodied and brokenhearted.

  And what it would mean for us, for the church, for us here and now in Aberdeen, to join that movement for liberation? What it would mean for us to sit at the feet of the folks brave enough to tell their stories here in your parish hall? What it would mean to have a movement for change led by the men and women who dream in jail cells that Jesus wants to open?

Nazareth was too afraid to do it. Too afraid perhaps of Rome, of Jesus, of the risk, of the possibility. Are we?

All This Talk About Guns

In all my years on social media, I have avoided, for the most part, speaking about guns. My Facebook page, for example, is strongly divided between my friends who are liberal and advocate frequently for stronger gun control measures and my working class family, neighbors, and friends who hunt, collect guns, and often carry them. There never seems to be a good time to talk about this divide in my life, never a good time to tell my part of this story. In the wake of so many tragedies, so much death, I just want to grieve. But I also have decided to tell this part of my story.

I grew up working class, in a predominantly white rural community, and I work in those communities now. I suppose a lot of people, looking into the place I grew up, would label us as gun toting, backwards rednecks.

I learned to handle weapons long before I learned to drive and it was a point of pride for me that I could handle rifles, handguns, bows, and bowie knives with ease. I was taught, like most working class kids, that guns were tools and were dangerous weapons. We used them for butchering animals on the farm, we used them to defend animals against wild dogs, we used them for hunting, and we learned to use them for self-defense.  We never waved them in the air, never pointed at anything we didn’t intend to shoot, and kept them safely stored and cleaned.

The world I grew up in was never safe, much like the world everywhere else. Living on the edge of the wilderness meant that wild animals were always a threat and once, I was trailed by a pair of cougars who had been hunting livestock in the valley. Violence was common. Some of it involved guns, like when a friend was stalked by her ex-boyfriend threatening to shoot her. Much of it did not—the neighbors kids getting sexually assaulted, neighboring men breaking into fistfights and feuds. I learned early and thoroughly that the world is not a safe place and that evil is real.

I never had the illusion that weapons kept me safe, particularly. They were simply tools that gave me an advantage in a world that was dangerous and sometimes very evil. To this day, I still own a gun and, as a single woman living alone, it makes me feel safer. Not safe. Just safer, depending on luck and skill.

Now, as a priest, as a pastor in a rural community, I struggle with how to talk about weapons. Everyone I know carries some kind of weapon--  all sorts of hunting blades or pocketknives, mace, machetes, occasionally guns. I ask people not to carry weapons openly in our spaces, but I also know that people need these tools—for putting up tents as much as for defense. Young women come to me and ask my advice about carrying weapons, because they know that the rate of sexual assault for women on the street is officially at 100%.  People (including many of these women) who are caught with guns and have a felony record spend years in prison. Those who advocate for stronger gun control laws rarely understand that the people who usually are convicted and imprisoned as a result of such legislation are not mass murderers—they are mostly poor, mostly desperate, disproportionately people of color trying to survive a bitter, deadly world.

Theologically, there are two points I think we don’t always consider.

First, even though I strongly believe in human capacity for goodness, even though I even lean Pelagian in my understanding of human nature, I am also aware of the tremendous human capacity for evil. The world is not, and never has been, safe for most people. And people living on the edge are especially aware of that. Fighting for survival in a capitalist society where there is not enough for everyone forces you to confront evil in a way that people living comfortably don’t always have to see. That evil is up close, in the person of your neighbor, and even your friend, who might be hungry enough to slice your tent and steal your food or angry enough at the world to fight you for your last cigarette or suffer from PTSD so badly that he thinks you are an enemy soldier. That evil is up close in the black market you are forced to participate in, where marketers battle for space and clients and resources. Your ability to defend yourself can mean life or death.

Evil is also structural. One of the ways that manifests is in who gets protected in our society. Our police and protection systems are meant, first and foremost, to protect property and its owners. If you do not own property, or are a threat to property, then your life is not necessarily protected. It may in fact be, and often is, targeted. With weapons and guns. In the hands of law enforcement. I’m not suggesting that AK-47s should be in the hands of private citizens, but I am wondering if they should be on our streets when police conduct a standoff in a rural neighborhood.

When I see blanket calls for more gun control, I wonder.

Do we intend to disarm law enforcement too, with 1,000 people shot by police last year, mostly young, mostly poor, disproportionally people of color, many mentally ill?

Do we intend to do something more to insure that people are not in constant competition for basic needs, which leads inevitably to intense interpersonal violence on the streets and in poor communities?

Do we intend to actually address the root causes of violence? Violence and death are always specific. The young man who went on a shooting spree in sororities in California targeted women because he felt women didn’t give him enough attention. The 49 people killed in a gay bar in Orlando were killed because they were queer and immigrant and brown and black. What do we plan to do about that kind of hate? Because all the laws in the world are not going to keep an assault rifle out of the hands of a private security worker who wants to kill a lot of people.

Sometimes, honestly, a call for gun control in our world feels like a cop out. I have no illusions that guns are going to save us from anything. I am not opposed to laws that regulate the sale of handguns or assault rifles. But I’m not sure that any of those measures would change the violence that I witness or the violence that we as a nation witness. I know for sure that these laws further criminalize poor people and fill our prisons.

There is harder work to do. People need access to enough, so they are not in constant competition for space and resources and black market cred. People need to be seen as human. Misogyny and racism and homophobia are real and deadly, folks. Law enforcement needs to be held accountable, especially for poor lives. Passing a few laws about guns is too easy. If we really want to stop violence, we need so much more.