"Find one thing that you're going to ... do to make a difference"

Rev. Pat Jackson, Interwoven Congregations Quarterly (ICQ): Thank you Michael for joining us for this conversation about "Congregations Doing Racial Justice" and the partnership between Calloway UMC and Rock Spring UCC in Arlington, Virginia. To get us started, can you share how you got involved with racial justice?

Michael Hemminger (President, Arlington County NAACP): I got connected to this work of racial justice from my own life experience. I grew up in California and was in and out of 12 different foster homes. I lived under bridges, in homeless shelters and in the back of a U-Haul truck at one point. So I grew up in circumstances that some people would say might predict a different life outcome for me. But throughout my life, strong mentors and people of faith have surrounded me and told me “You’re going to make a difference in this world, you’re going to be someone someday.” So I grew up believing that. My personal experiences led me to want to do my part and give back to people who look like me and might be in similar living conditions. I've been in Arlington since 2017 and signed up to do things that help me fulfill my purpose; and the NAACP is one of those avenues. I am six months into the role as branch president.

ICQ: What are you most passionate about in your role with the NAACP?

Michael: Criminal justice is my top passion and mass incarceration is the greatest civil rights injustice of our time. When you look at root causes, you learn that there are things at the systemic level causing these outcomes -- housing insecurity, food insecurity and inequity in education, employment and health care. These other systems are working together to produce a predicted outcome. So I feel compelled to do my part.

ICQ: How did you first connect with this project between Calloway and Rock Spring?

Michael: Pastor DeLishia Davis of Calloway UMC leads the Arlington NAACP’s Religious Affairs committee and is also president of the Arlington Black Clergy Association. She called me and said “You really need to check this out.” So I joined the Courageous Conversations and was really inspired by the work that was happening. I could see in real-time the lights turning on and I could see people connecting things and feeling empowered to make a difference.

ICQ: I understand you were a panelist for the session on affordable housing.

Michael: Yes, I helped unpack some of the racial history here in Arlington. I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that there are deed restrictions that exist even today that say things like “black people shall never be allowed to own here.” They didn't understand that in 1938, when black people were only permitted to live in rowhouses, Arlington County took explicit action to ban rowhouses and made those types of housing nonconforming so that the people that lived in them couldn't update them. People were also surprised to learn that the American Nazi Party was also founded right here in Arlington, or that Arlington used to be 40% black and now it's only 9% black.

ICQ: The Calloway and Rock Spring partnership is about helping people move from education to action to impact systemic racism. What would you say to congregations that are trying to do that?

Michael: It's the million dollar question. But we have to do something because these systems were designed that when we do nothing at all, they're going to continue to produce disparate impacts on historically under-represented or disadvantaged communities. The topics are very heavy, but we have to have enough courage to say, “Hey, I'm going to do even one small thing to make a difference.” What ends up happening, unfortunately, is two things. One, as I said, these systems end up running on autopilot because we don’t have personal awareness. But then when we do the book clubs and conversations, and we're trained to be more aware of what racism looks like, when we see it, the fight or flight kicks in. A lot of times we might say, “Oh, I know this is wrong, but I don't have the courage to speak up.” Dr. King spoke about this in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail when he talked about how the white moderate actually causes more harm than the racist people who are out there on the front lines. At the NAACP, we could say the same thing a 1,000 times as loud as we can, and then one person that has that relationship with the person who has the key to that door can have a very casual conversation, and that door is immediately unlocked. So it's up to all of us to use that privilege for the advancement of other people. So to answer your question: find one thing that you're going to commit to do to make a difference. It could be big or small, and if we all did that, I really think we would see progress.

ICQ: How does this partnership between Calloway UMC and Rock Spring United Church of Christ look to you from your seat in the community?

Michael: I love it. It reminds me of the history of the NAACP which was actually founded by both black and white people who were willing to be on the front lines for change. To have people of faith who are white say I'm willing to use my position and privilege in order to help our common cause and then black folks bring the real lived experience of what it's like to deal with racism and the toll that it takes on your entire wellbeing on a daily basis -- I think there's nothing that can stop that type of partnership, and I'm inspired by the change that can happen.

[This interview was a part of the October 2023 Interwoven Congregations Quarterly on "Congregations Doing Racial Justice." Catch the full issue here.]

Congregations Doing Racial Justice

In October, we published our second issue in a series on DOING Racial Justice. This issue featured a deep dive into the partnership between Calloway United Methodist Church and Rock Spring United Church of Christ in Arlington, Virginia. (Calloway is a predominantly African American congregation and Rock Spring is a primarily white congregation.) In this blog post, we lift up the interview between two lay leaders who have played a key role in this effort, Christine Purka and Leslie Atkins. Their interview describes some of the key steps that their partnership team took to help both congregations move from educating members about racism to taking concrete action. We hope this may help inspire and guide other congregations intent on impacting systemic racism! Here's the interview:

Pat Jackson, Interwoven Congregations Quarterly (ICQ): Leslie and Christine, could you share how you came to be involved in the project for racial justice between Calloway UMC and Rock Spring UCC?

Leslie Atkins: I've been a member of Rock Spring UCC for five years. I first got involved in issues of racial equity through Arlington’s Challenging Racism program. Until then, I had no real understanding of structural racism. To understand for the first time in my late fifties that the government played a huge role in the racism that we see today in housing made me want to be involved in changing things.

Christine Purka: I've been with Calloway for five years now. The impetus for these racial justice conversations came during Covid, when we were starving for connection and struggling with racial equity issues. I was at an interfaith event and started chatting with someone from Rock Spring. They spoke about the work they were doing in racial equity and I had the idea of bringing the two churches together. I'm very mindful that you can't just match up a white church and a black church. You need a white church that has been doing the work and understands systemic racism. They're not learning about their whiteness for the first time. And Rock Spring had done their education, but they wanted to move into action. So we built this Courageous Conversations program to move people from education to action, to come together and dive into the criminal justice, housing and education inequities in Arlington.

ICQ: How did you decide to focus the initial Courageous Conversation program on those three areas?

Christine: The NAACP of Arlington was a real anchor for us. Our pastor, Rev. Davis, is the chair of their Religious Affairs Committee and Calloway is a member. So we knew that the NAACP has their own committees on housing, education and criminal justice, which got us to focus on those three topics initially. When we moved into the second phase of our work, participants said “What about environmental justice?”

Leslie: An important thing we had to do at Rock Spring as a white congregation was take the lead from the black community. During the Courageous Conversations program, the chair of the NAACP was in my small group and he was very firm in saying, “The most important thing you can do, once you've done this learning, is to come out and help us advocate for these issues.”

ICQ: How did you run the six month Courageous Conversations program?

Christine: Leslie and I had a fantastic Planning Committee from both churches, including both pastors, and we met regularly to support each of the six monthly sessions. We were very disciplined in having pre-work. We would send articles, podcasts or videos on the systemic nature of the session’s topic. Then, when they came to the program, we always had a panel of local experts like the Commonwealth Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti for criminal justice or Michael Hemminger of the NAACP for housing. Small breakout discussions [8 groups with 10 per group] followed the panels. We tried to make the small groups as diverse as possible and keep them together throughout the six-month program. Each group had two leads, one person of color and one white person, one from each church. We'd conclude each session with a bigger share.

Leslie: We had slots for 100 people to join on Zoom, 50 from Rock Spring and 50 from Calloway. Because Calloway's congregation is smaller, they opened it up to NAACP participants and the neighborhood around the church. We always had 80 participants or more.

ICQ: How did you decide what to do next after the six months of Courageous Conversations?

Leslie: People didn’t wanted this to be the end. And it's a huge step to move from education to action. So we came up with these “Racial Equity Action Groups (REAGs).” It naturally flowed to pick what we had discussed in our sessions: criminal justice, education and housing. Let's start with that. We felt it was important that these be self-led groups. We wanted to set up the structure and see how things could evolve.

Christine: We did a participant survey to ask people which of the topics had the most resonance for them and whether they would be interested in taking this forward in an action group and leading those groups.

ICQ: So the Action Groups formed. How did the people in those groups decide what steps to take?

Leslie: We trusted that the people involved would find their way. A lot of them started with more education to help hone in on an issue. So the action groups developed very organically.

ICQ: What do you see as the most significant accomplishments and challenges thus far for the REAGs?

Christine: After our Courageous Conversations, Temple Rodef Shalom came to us and said they wanted to do a program across Arlington, Fairfax and Alexandria, VA. They used a lot of our format and speakers – so I love that we inspired that to happen through the Jewish community. I also am proud of the work that the REAGs are doing. As an example, members of the criminal justice group are attending sentencing on Friday in court to help make sure judges are treating people fairly. As for challenges, I think it's just hard to keep it going.

Leslie: Another impact that we've seen is that all of the Racial Equity Action Groups have access now to leaders in the community. If they ask for a meeting with the chief equity officer in the schools, the chief equity officer meets with them. We had people, including myself, who had never testified at a county council meeting, testify on why zoning for housing needed to be changed to deal with systemic racism. I had the information and was able to amplify concerns in the community. White people need to say the truth that they see. I think part of the challenge is expanding our leadership and continuing the work with the limited time that people have. We want to embed this work in the congregations so that it continues even if the pastors move on to new positions in their denominations.

ICQ: What keeps you going?

Leslie: For me it's helping create a better world for my children. I want to be an example to them and others in my congregation so that they go out and continue this work. We have to take what we've learned and do something to make that difference.

Christine: Racial inequities are deeply embedded in all of our systems and institutions, so it has to be intentional work to undo it. We just can't look away. We can make progress one conver-sation at a time, changing hearts and minds. But there is the white privilege of being able to go to sleep at night and not live it every day. It's harder work for people of color who commit their life to this, who live it in their day job, in their personal lives and through their children. Engaging people in these conversations, particularly through our faith communities, is that common ground where we can all share in these conversations and turn to action.

Dreaming for Justice

THE SPEECH. This year will mark the 60th anniversary of what might be the most famous speech ever given by an American. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. painted a picture that remains fixed in our national consciousness. It was a dream. But is the picture we hold onto from that address the image that King most wanted to illustrate? Many perhaps recall these evocative lines,

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood ... I have a dream that one day in Alabama ... little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

This dream was an image of reconciliation, a coming together across the lines of race which in 1963 were often fixed barriers that might shock us today. And yet in truth our separation in society along the lines of race remains, if perhaps but more subtly. And so many of us continue to long for reconciliation. But King's dream, as offered from those marble steps 60 years ago, was grounded first and foremost in a call for justice. The image he put forward was that of a bounced check.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclaimation ... But one hundred years later ... the life of the colored American is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination ... In a sense we have come to our Nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir ... It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

It was upon such a foundation of justice that King then imagined the scenes of reconciliation that fired people's imagination -- then, and now. This MLK holiday, as we consider the giant legacy of that icon whose life was snuffed out at a mere 39 years of age, let's continue to dream. But let us fix our dreams on justice, the justice we still need today in the face of enduring inequities of household wealth, healthcare outcomes, treatment in our criminal justice system (among other arenas of life) that persist along the lines of race.

Then, and only then, may we truly hope to hear freedom ring and harvest the fruit of reconciliation that we crave across this great land.

-- Rev, Pat Jackson