The conference had speakers, panel discussions and workshops like many others do, but the people that were leading all of these were not ordinary people, they were extraordinary people. They were priest, pastors and civil rights activists from all over the United states, from every denominational background you could imagine, every age you could imagine, all ethnicities, both sexes, movers and shakers in the Kingdom of God, and they were all friends, brothers and sisters. There were civil rights activists who had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and there were new civil rights activists fighting for immigrant rights and living wages. There were people who had worked in Calcutta and with Mother Teresa. All of this, to me, was overwhelming. To be in the presence of these people and their stories, their stories that will bring you to tears while at the same time light a fire of righteous anger in you, will never leave me. The stories of injustice that happen all around our country and world are present today just as much so as ever. We as the church, and we has human beings need to recognize that our will is to preserve justice within the human race with love and humility.
The conference was to train us how to be grassroots organizers in our local church or faith based communities, to lobby for the poor because they can't afford to do it themselves. There are two goals that we are supposed to organize people to pledge for and to have in mind when they cast their votes, one is a domestic goal of reducing poverty in the United States by 50% over the next ten years and the other is to meet the millenium development goals set in place by the UN to reduce poverty internationally. So we are supposed to first register voters if they aren't already registered and then get people to sign pledge cards saying that they will vote these issues next elections and then, like a petition, we take the voter pledge cards and bring them to our state elected officials and say here are your constituents and this is what they are voting for, are you on board? and then Sojourners will make it public and next April there is a rally in D.C. where we will have meetings with our elected officials and hold them accountable to their pledges. It is kind of tricky for us because we don't have a traditional home church but we think we have figured out a way to make it happen. So we are both excited and anxious about pulling it off.
We were also blessed to meet some amazing people our age who were doing amazing things, big and small, all over the country and world. It was encouraging to see people living in intentional community with each other. Guys committing to live in true community with each other, and also girls doing the same, and even some couples committing to live life together and raise families together. We also met a lot of people from bigger cities who were choosing to move from their urban homes to downtown( not the hip/artsy parts and not gentrification) but where the people that they are working and fighting for live. You have to live with the people, you can't just go in and help once a month, you have to immerse yourself in their lives and into their community, creating a beloved community. Such a beautiful thing. There was this one guy from Toronto who lived in a poorer part of the city and did a lot with the kids around him and tried to show them that they were not poor, that actually they were richer than 40% of the world and showed them examples of what impoverished was, and then took it to the next level and gave them a since of empowerment and wealth by getting them to send a pair of their basketball shoes to kids who didn't have any shoes at all. He called it two kinds of oppression that poor kids/people face, internal and external oppression, and he was trying to reverse the image of themselves that they are told they are. This is just one of many beautiful stories that we heard. This is love, this is the gospel of Jesus, this is tangible.
