Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson speaking at the Bring Chicago Home People’s Hearing
Today I joined other Chicagoans from across the city – including some elected officials and candidates – for the Bring Chicago Home People’s Hearing.
Bring Chicago Home is incredibly important to keep in mind as we gear up for the upcoming Run-Off Election. Not all of the candidates will support it, and 26 alderpeople need to vote for BCH in order to get it on the ballot. We were unable to get BCH on the February ballot because only 25 alders supported it.
A big shout out to our leaders who attended the People’s Hearing today to voice their support for BCH (sorry if I missed anyone):
Alderpeople and Alder candidates:
Daniel La Spata (1st Ward) Andre Vasquez (40th Ward) Julia Ramirez (12th Ward) Jessie Fuentes (26th Ward) Desmon Yancy (5th Ward) Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th Ward) Rossana Rodríguez (33rd Ward)
Newly elected Police District Council Member Rev. Marilyn Pagán-Banks
Mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson
WHY SUPPORT BRING CHICAGO HOME:
In the Christian tradition, we look to the teachings and commandments of Jesus, a homeless refugee who said the GREATEST commandment is to Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.
Bring Chicago Home seeks to put this commandment into action:
65,000 Chicagoans experience homelessness.
1 in 4 are children. 1/2 are families. 3 in 4 are People of Color.
Many are veterans and survivors of domestic violence.
Many are CPS students and college students.
Many are refugees from around the world and Asylum Seekers who recently arrived in Chicago from the border.
LGBTQIA+ youth are twice as likely to experience homelessness than their non-queer peers.
People who experience homelessness live on the streets, stay in shelters (if they can find ones that have space), couch hop, live in cars, or are in doubled-up households.
Doubled-up households are not included in HUD’s definition of homelessness. This means if you are doubled-up, you are not eligible for some federal housing assistance programs.
Most shelters in Chicago only house men, do not house families, children, or youth, and/or are not safe for queer folx (especially trans folx.)
Many of the college students I work with who are housing insecure struggle to find a shelter that feels safe or that can house their children. Many of these students are doubled-up and thus are not eligible for assistance programs. Some of them are living out of their cars with their siblings.
Imagine trying to get a college degree or trying to focus in class (K-12) when you don’t know where you’re going to sleep at night or if you’re going to eat that day.
Currently, Chicago’s annual budget that’s dedicated to homelessness prevention is $26 million compared to LA’s annual budget of $636.9 million and New York’s annual budget of $1.4 billion.
Bring Chicago Home offers a solution to help increase our annual budget to $160 million for affordable housing and homelessness prevention. This steady revenue would come from a 1.9% increase on the one-time Real Estate Transfer Sales Tax for homes that are over $1 million.
This would only affect 4.2% of Chicagoans, but the revenue would be able to house and provide wraparound services (job training, mental health services, youth programs, safety initiatives, etc.) to more than 12,000 houseless families over the next 10 years.
We all benefit when more people are housed and receive wraparound services. As 1 Corinthians 12:26 reminds us: “If one member (of the body) suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
Learn more about BCH, join the movement, and help spread the word!
Today I am guest blogging over at Presbyterian Outlook: “It’s Time to Talk with Youth in the Church About Racism”
“Last October, I returned home to Chicago after marching with hundreds of other clergy and community members in Ferguson, Missouri, and sat down with my youth (who are mostly youth of color) to discuss what was going on in Ferguson and around the country.
Toward the end of the discussion, I asked if any of them had experienced racial profiling or knew someone who had. Whether it was a story about how a family member gets pulled over in his car even when he isn’t speeding, how a neighbor was stopped and frisked while she walked to the soccer field, or how a mom begs her son not to wear a hoodie on his head when he leaves the house – almost every youth of color in the group had something to say.
While it was difficult to listen as they shared their experiences and fears, these stories are not new to me. As a youth pastor in Chicago, I’ve heard many like them throughout the past several years…”
Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: the one day of the year when many people across the nation take off school and work to remember and celebrate Dr. King and his work for racial justice and equality. However, too often, this day serves as merely a holiday from our “every-day activities” and maintains only a small “memory” of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many other unnamed faithful and courageous voices proclaimed and peacefully fought for in order to bring about an end to the Jim Crow racial segregation laws fifty years ago. Consequently, there tends to lack on this holiday a recognition of the racial and economic injustice that continues to persist throughout our society today and thus King’s unfinished work we are all called to continue to work for.
However, yesterday I had the opportunity to gather at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church on the far South Side of Chicago with more than 2,000 people from all over the Chicago area who have not forgotten about the majority of this nation’s people who have still not seen Dr. King’s dream fully come true.
“We are not coming to engage in any histrionic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. We read one day, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at the National Cathedral during his work on the Poor People’s Campaign – on March 31, 1968, a week before his assassination.
Organized by IIRON and The People’s Lobby, the event was called “Hope in the Age of Crisis: Reclaiming Dr. King’s Radical Vision for Economic Equality” and included a public meeting and a call to action by community and religious leaders, such as: Rev. Dwight Gardner, president of IIRON and pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Gary, IN; Bishop Wayne Miller of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of American; Rabbi Brant Rosen of Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, IL; Jack Darin of the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club; and Bishop Sally Dyck of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church – among many others.
The meeting began with a congregational song led by a combined choir: “Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty…” and a call to action by Rev. Dwight Gardner, who proclaimed: “We must stand! We must stand together!” Throughout the meeting, several Chicago and Illinois elected officials were called up to the front of the sanctuary and asked to publicly agree to support legislation that would protect the common good.
As we remember the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many others who have courageously and peacefully fought for the common good, let us not forget that we – too – are called to do the same until all of God’s children are cared for and treated equally.
Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins…
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.” – Isaiah: 58:1, 6-10
So join the movement to “stand together” to continue Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work of racial and economic justice for all!
UPCOMING EVENTS:
IIRON & The People’s Lobby Orientation; Who We Are/What We Believe: Wed., Jan. 29, 6:30-8:30pm
For more information about this movement and the root of the economic problems we face today, check out this video:
“There is another thing closely related to racism that I would like to mention as another challenge. We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two-thirds of the people of the world go to bed hungry tonight. They are ill-housed; they are ill-nourished; they are shabbily clad. I’ve seen it in Latin America; I’ve seen it in Africa; I’ve seen this poverty in Asia…
As I noticed these things, something within me cried out, “Can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned?” And an answer came: “Oh no!” Because the destiny of the United States is tied up with the destiny of India and every other nation. And I started thinking of the fact that we spend in America millions of dollars a day to store surplus food, and I said to myself, “I know where we can store that food free of charge—in the wrinkled stomachs of millions of God’s children all over the world who go to bed hungry at night.” And maybe we spend far too much of our national budget establishing military bases around the world rather than bases of genuine concern and understanding.
Not only do we see poverty abroad, I would remind you that in our own nation there are about forty million people who are poverty-stricken. I have seen them here and there. I have seen them in the ghettos of the North; I have seen them in the rural areas of the South; I have seen them in Appalachia. I have just been in the process of touring many areas of our country and I must confess that in some situations I have literally found myself crying…
This is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.” – more of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at the National Cathedral during his work on the Poor People’s Campaign.
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood"
musingsfromabricolage 