The Chinook Fund's Giving Project

My Giving Project cohort

Over the past several months I have been a part of a program called The Giving Project. Run through The Chinook Fund, The Giving Project is a cohort of individuals across Colorado who are diverse across race, gender identity, and class. Each cohort receives training around social justice, race and class, fundraising, and grantmaking.

There are many things I enjoy about The Chinook Fund:

1) it prioritizes funding small nonprofits that focus on community organizing and advocacy, rather than direct service. One of my pastor friends shared a story with me that illustrates why advocacy and organizing are so important:

You live in a village by the river. One day, a baby floats down the river in a basket. Because you and your neighbors are good people, you go get the baby out of the river. The next day, two babies float down the river, so you get them as well. Soon there is a steady stream of babies floating down the river, so you and your neighbors form a 501(c)3 nonprofit in order to raise money to support getting the babies out of the river.

At some point, someone has to ask the question, “Why are these babies being sent down the river?” This leads to folks going upstream to figure out the source of the problem and fix it.

This is the type of work that The Giving Project funds, except that:

2) It prioritizes organizations that are lead by the communities most impacted by the issues they work on. Very often nonprofits approach issues as “saviors”. They are funded and led by folks who, while well-meaning, do not truly understand the realities of the issues in the same way the most impacted people are. The extreme version of this situation are non-profits whose staff live in DC, New York, or San Francisco but fund work in other countries. It is very hard to be in this situation and not be separated from the the impact of the pain. The Chinook Fund addresses this dynamic by prioritizing organizations led by impacted communities.

3) It places race and class as the center of its analyses of problems. Many of the most dire issues facing our country impact people of color, especially those with little generational wealth. Our society is only as strong as those who are most oppressed.

If you are interested in supporting this work, please visit The Chinook Fund’s donation page in order to give. When you see the option “Is this donation for the Giving Project?”, select “Yes” and make sure to type in my name.

Thanks!

Political Beliefs Are Statement About Values - Reacting to Others' Beliefs

Fruit of the Spirit from Christ Church Cathedral Dublin

I recently have been involved in some Facebook discussions (I know, I know) with people from my past who are libertarians or evangelical conservatives. I get pretty riled during this conversations, then sad that people that I once respected and liked are now so different from me. This is especially sad in the the case of Christians who fall in the conservative evangelical bucket, because we are supposed to have the same faith.

Why does this make me sad? Because I believe people’s political beliefs are a reflection of their values. My values come from my faith, which in turn comes from a mixture of deep Biblical study, reading the Church Fathers, experience, liturgy, community, and constant reflection. My faith calls me to find a balance between being kind and being prophetic - the Bible is pretty clear that sometimes these two can’t happen at the same time. Look at Moses at Mt. Sinai, almost all the Prophets, and Jesus when dealing with Pharisees and the moneychangers in the Temple.

When I see someone who is a Christian saying things that are obviously not Christian, what should I do? Jesus says not to judge others, but the better interpretation there is probably “Don’t condemn others”, not “Don’t evaluate others.” Paul lays out a process for discipline within a congregation, but it isn’t clear that the process works outside of congregations or in our distributed and connected world. The Prophets were not afraid to use harshness or hyperbole to call people’s attention to their errors.

So it seems like there are a variety of ways for me to approach fellow Christians who are not speaking and acting in ways that are aligned with the faith. They range from gentle, private conversations to public “calling out”. How do I know which one to use in different situations?

Right now, I’m looking at the example of Jesus. Generally speaking, Jesus is gentle to those whose sins harm mostly themselves. He is harsh with those whose sins cause others to suffer, like the Pharisees, teachers of the law, temple merchants, or Paul when he forbids Jesus from fulfilling his role.

Therefore, I am likely to speak harshly to those people, especially Christians, who speak or act in accordance with political beliefs that perpetuate the oppression of others. This is because political beliefs are a reflection of that person’s values. If they claim to be a Christian and don’t act in accordance with their faith, they are like the Israelites before the exile, the Pharisees, or the merchants in the temple.

A Reflection on the Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Martin Luther King Jr.

April 4th, 2019 is the 51st anniversary of the martyrdom of Martin Luther King Jr. The Episcopal Church, my church, honors Dr. King as both a prophet and a martyr. He was a prophet because he spoke words of both condemnation and hope - condemnation for the systems and society that allow racism and oppression, hope for the possibility of a better world.

Very often, when people honor Dr. King, they go back to his “I Have A Dream” speech, which ends with a crescendo of hope. However, when I think about Dr. King, I think about his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.”

This letter is a response to many white moderate faith leaders who took issue with the ways that Dr. King and his followers challenged the injustices of the day, injustices that is still with us. Two paragraphs have spoken to me for several years:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

This distinction between various types of peace speaks to me. Too often we equate peace with”the absence of tension.” This type of peace is used to silence those seeking justice.

As a Christian, I find The Bible Project’s videos on peace and justice to be a great overview of the concepts. Peace and justice are very tightly connected. They share an idea of wholeness within complexity. When there is peace and justice, there is still suffering, trials, loss, change, and growth. Peace is not a static thing divorced from the realities of life. When there is peace and justice, the individual and communal responses to dealing with the problems of life maintain a complex, dynamic wholeness. A peace full of silent suffering is no peace at all.

One of my spiritual disciplines is to read regularly from “The Liturgy of the Hours”. Part of Evening Prayer is reciting the Magnificat (also called the Song of Mary), which is Mary’s prayer upon hearing that she would be the mother of the Christ. This is not a prayer that supports the idea of peace as the absence of conflict. It includes the lines:

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,

and has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

Many of us strive for the static peace, the absence of any sort of tension or conflict. I think this is because we have conflated the ideas of comfort and safety. Safety is a perfectly good desire. Not many people enjoy being hurt, nor should folks have to expect to be hurt. Being uncomfortable is not the same as being hurt. Exercise, self-development, and emotional growth are not comfortable, yet they produce stronger and better people.

So on this anniversary of the martyrdom of Dr. King, I invite us all to reflect whether you are pursing a peace that is full of justice or a peace that is silences justice in the name of comfort.

What's the Difference? - Organizer, Field Organizer, Canvasser

The 2020 Democratic Presidential primary season has already started, which means that candidates will start hiring staff. Most of the on-the-ground staff will be in the states that are early in the primary calendar, such as Iowa and New Hampshire. Given the number of candidates, it is likely that the titles for positions that are roughly the same will vary considerably.

We’ve seen some overlapping of titles, however, in recent years. The Obama presidential campaigns, especially, made use of the title “organizer” for the people on the ground working most directly with volunteers. This is likely given President Obama’s history as a community organizer, as well as the background of folks who helped President Obama’s campaigns develop their field and training plans, folks like Marshall Ganz and Joy Cushman. These individuals have decades of experience with long-term community organizing.

The title of “organizer” has since been used by more and more candidate’s campaigns, with varying levels of fidelity to the idea of an organizer that Ganz and Cushman had in mind. That idea came from unions, the Civil Rights movement, and other long-term community organizing groups like Faith in Action (formerly PICO). So in order to develop some clear distinctions, I offer the following definitions:

Organizer - This role focuses on building community and developing leaders. This is done through 1:1 conversations, house meetings, trainings, and coaching. The goal is to develop long-lasting organizations, centered around shared values and identity, that can use their growing power for a wide variety of purposes. These purposes can include legislative advocacy, direct action, and elections/civic engagement. The organizer is a thought-partner, agitator, teacher, pastor.

Field Organizer - The field organizer role is more limited than that of an organizer. They are given a plan, a geographic or demographic turf, specific skills, and told to execute the plan. They recruit volunteers to accomplish the plan. They may build up structures that look like those created by an organizer, but the key distinction is that the structures themselves do not determine priorities or goals. The field organizer is an doer and volunteer coordinator.

Canvasser - These folks have one job, which is simply to talk to people at the doors. These conversations are generally of two types: persuasion or Get Out the Vote. There is no true relational component to their work, which is driven purely by numbers. These folks can be truly effective for their given part in a strategy, but that part is very narrow and not up for debate or discussion.

Field organizers and canvassers are key parts of a candidates’ campaigns, but they shouldn’t be confused with the role of organizer as it exists in organizations that build long-term power. Indeed, it is not uncommon for organizations founded by staff from candidate campaigns to use the term organizer, when in fact they do not completely understand its breadth and depth.

Conflating these titles causes confusion within the larger progressive movement. I’ve seen individuals with several campaigns cycles of experience as an “organizer” (field organizer) on candidate campaigns try to move over to long-term community organizing groups, and be completely unequipped for their new role.

So let’s call a spade a spade.

Busyness

“This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.”

”Life Without Principle” - Henry David Thoreau

Data and its Usefulness

It is not unusual for me to hear people say that they don't feel like they need to have data, or quantitative information generally, inform their decisions.

Most of me thinks that is unwise. But I also understand their perspective, even if I don't agree with it. Sometimes the evangelists of "big data" promise things they can't deliver. Sometimes they have a misplaced idea of where data should be placed in their decision-making processes. Sometimes they just have a very narrow definition of data that prevents them from preaching its true worth.

My definition of data is "Information, mostly quantitative but sometimes qualitative, that can be organized in a way to see trends, judge performance, increase efficiency, and otherwise aid decision-making."

This is a fairly broad definition. Survey and polling results fall within this definition. So do results of experiments of varying levels of complexity. Self-reported data from employees qualifies. So does website and social media data, fundraising and other financial data, and field contact data. Publicaly available data, of course, qualifies.

I could go on and on.

There are pieces of information, though, that cannot fit easily into this definition, if at all. Some aspects of relationships are not easily categorized or quantified. There is no replacement for expertise or a wide network of contacts. Also, the general zeitgeist is almost impossible to measure.

However, deciding not to use data because it can't give you everything you want is "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good." This is especially true when it comes to tracking, and using, data to manage people and improve organizational effectiveness.

For example, tracking one-to-one conversations held by members of the sales team can allow a manager to coach her employees to make the most of potential leads, while halting or limiting time spent on leads that aren't producing sales. 

The manager would be wrong, though, to only look at the numbers and then order the sales rep to halt all work with a lead. It might be that the lead wants to switch suppliers, but has the wait until the current contract runs its course. In this situation, the sales rep is doing the wise thing; maintaining a relationship that will produce sales down the road. The quantitative information prompts the manager to ask questions. It isn't the end of the decision-making process, but the beginning.

This type of process is also useful in community organizing. Managers can see how many one-to-one conversations organizers are having per week. They can see who those people are, and if they have taken any actions (house meetings, legislative visits, phone banks/door-to-door canvassing, etc.) If an organizer if spending a significant amount of time with an individual who is not taking next steps, the manager can ask the organizer what is going on. 

It might be that the potential leader is going through a divorce/death/job transition/etc. They could have all the characteristics of someone who will be great, but life is just getting in the way. In that situation, it might be worth it for the organizer to continue working with the individual even though s/he isn't currently taking action.

However, it could also be that the two have become friends, but that the individual will never do more, and the organizer is blind to it. The manager can then challenge the organizer to spend less time on that relationship.

Regardless of your situation, if you aren't tracking your organizational activities in comprehensive and meaningful ways, you are robbing yourself of valuable information that can be used to make your work more efficient. On the flip side, data can't save you. If you don't know your field, stakeholders, clients, constituents, or customers deeply, or if your organization is deeply dysfunctional, then terabytes of data won't make you successful.

The Social Determinants of Health

There is a concept in public health called "the social determinants of health." Despite what might be the dominant ideology in two out of three branches of government these days, personal choice does not determine everything that happens to us. When it comes to health, there are a variety of things that determine how healthy individuals and communities can be.

This graph from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that the majority of factors in determining premature death are not individual choice:

Social and environmental factors are especially interesting. Our physical location and the characteristics of our social networks play a large part in how healthy we are. This is not a surprising idea. If we live in areas with high levels of pollution, we expect to be less healthy. If people have difficulty affording health food, we expect people to be less healthy. If you do not have quality health insurance coverage, and therefore do not see a physician for preventive care, we expect you will be less healthy.

Here is an overview of several social determinants of health:

Public policy choices in these areas have public health repercussions. This is why I support active government and non-profit interactions in these areas. We simply cannot trust a developer, for instance, to have the public health consequences of their planning choices in mind. Government and non-profit entities need to have a strong voice and strong regulatory powers to ensure that private entities make choices with resources that have public health as a priority.

An example of this is the prevalence of cars and driving. Cars, in many ways, are horrible for public health. Pollution is one thing. Also, people are much more likely to be killed or injured in an accident involving a car than in almost any other situation. Many developers, however, are incentivized to build environments that cater to drivers because ease of access via roads and ample parking can mean higher costumer turnover and more profits. This is not in the interest of public health. Someone needs to have the power to balance business interests and public health. That's the government.

What Does a Data Manager Do?

Recently I was asked to explain exactly what I do. That is an excellent question. I've been trying to come up with an elevator speech since I started with PICO. It is impossible.

PICO National Network is a network of 501(c)3 non-profits that work with faith communities to do social justice advocacy.

What is social justice advocacy? My colleague Edwin has a great analogy: imagine you live in a village on a river. One day, a baby floats down the river in a basket. Because you are a decent human being, you go get the baby. The next day, two babies come down the river. Three babies the day after. You end up organizing your friends and neighbors. You form a 501(c)3, raise funds, hire staff, and try to catch as many babies as possible. 

Eventually, you have to ask the question: where are the babies coming from? What can we do to go upriver and make sure fewer babies come down the river? That's social justice advocacy. PICO and its federations (what we call our affiliate non-profits) ask questions about how the society we live in is causing suffering, and how we can change the system. This means looking at the entire system (government, churches, business community, etc.) and fighting against the forces that cause people to suffer.

I support 11 state federations in their social justice work. These federations are coalitions of churches, synagogues, mosques, and other people of faith who want to go upriver and stop the babies being sent downriver.

My main role is to help the federations think about how to use information to build their power. That includes developing and utilizing systems for tracking volunteers, donors, events, etc. I help them target people to talk to when they do non-partisan election work. I do investigative and explanatory analysis on data, as well as produce data visualizations using proprietary data and public data.

I have experience in politics and non-profit campaigns in several states and across several cultures. I help several federations do strategic planning and outreach planning, host trainings, and network with like-minded organizations. In those situations, I provide another perspective and function as a sounding board.

I also help train, coach, and mentor new staff from a data perspective, but also using my previous experiences doing outreach and campaigns. I often provide support and encouragement in what is emotionally taxing work. 

I love this work because it brings together my faith, community outreach, and data science. I am able to integrate most aspects of my life in ways that couldn't when I was doing partisan work. Also, this work is much more foundational than electoral organizing; we are building a base of people that weren't previously involved and growing them into a force that can speak powerfully and prophetically to the powers that oppress them and their neighbors.

Assimilation

Copyright Paramount Pictures

When I was young, I was a huge nerd (still am). I would spend lots of time watching Star Trek in all its variations. Yes, I have just been vulnerable with you. Do with it as you will.

One of the primary antagonists in the Star Trek universe is the Borg. They are a group of cybernetic beings whose only goal is to "assimilate" other races. When they are about to assimilate people, the Borg would say "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own." The way that phrase is constructed makes it sound like the Borg would take the good parts of other races and add it to their own goodness.

There's a problem, though. All Borg look alike. Why is that?

Because assimilation is bad.

Cultures are different from each other. People from Iraq and people from Texas are different in very real ways. People from Boston and people from Dallas are also different in very real ways.

Differences aren't bad. My way of doing things works for me (most of the time). Your way of doing things works for you. As long as I don't hurt you, and you don't hurt me, then there shouldn't be a problem. This isn't relativism. I believe violence and oppression against those not in power are universal evils. These convictions come from my faith. No one can shroud those things in culture.

Not everyone shares this perspective.

I saw an exchange on a friend's Facebook post where someone was saying that people in Western Europe were having problems with refugees. Many French and Germans especially do not want more refugees. The problem isn't necessarily with the refugees, though there are always bad apples. The problem is that Western Europeans, for the most part, want refugees to assimilate.

Assimilation is when people from one group take on the culture of another group. This is almost always done through pressure from the dominant culture, either direct or indirect. When European cultures colonized the world, they forced people to take on their cultures. We don't colonize any longer, and that is a good thing. However, there is still pressure when people migrate, willingly or unwillingly, to become like the people they are around. 

This is especially evil in the United States because we aren't meant to have a unified culture. We are supposed to be a safe haven for those of other cultures we are being oppressed in their homelands. When they take refuge here, they are supposed to be able to practice their religion and culture in peace. Yes, they are supposed to be Americans. Yes, they are supposed to follow the laws of the land. But one of the myths of this country I find most appealing is the idea that we are big enough to accept people from around the world. A mosaic, not a melting pot.

Therefore I find it extremely disturbing when I see people posting about how they want to ban refugees or immigrants because they want to "keep Americans safe." What they don't seem to realize is that everyone who wants to come to this country is an American, they just haven't got here yet.

Right now, there are more white, Anglo-American people in the United States than any other ethnicity. But even that statement is a lie. People who are white are from ethnicities that often hated each other throughout history: English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, French, German, Dutch, Jewish. For the most part (except the English), these people were pressured, directly or indirectly,  to give up their cultural distinctiveness in order to make living in this country easier. That is a moral failure on the part of those in power.

We should be moving towards a society where we celebrate difference. I am a better person because I work with people who do not share my cultural background. I have grown from these interactions and friendships in ways I would not have been able to if I had lived solely among people like me. When people come here from another culture, we should welcome them as they are and not expect them, or pressure them, to be like us. We were all from somewhere else.

Don't be like the Borg. Don't force people to go through life looking like you. Don't use a hijab as an excuse to not hire someone. Don't assume that your way of speaking makes you more intelligent than those that speak English in other ways (the British think we all sound like idiots anyway). Uniformity is bland and leads to weakness. There is strength in diversity.

Idolatry

“The Adoration of the Golden Calf” – Nicolas Poussin (1633-4)

The idea of idolatry is common to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Idolatry is when you place something other than God and his will as primary, both in private and in public. Almost anything can be an idol. Most people think about things that are also well-known sins, like greed and lust. However, things like family, friends, and productivity can be idols if you place them before God.

One of the most powerful idols is America. Hear me clearly: America is not inherently evil. I believe it has done an enormous amount of good in the world. Many of the narratives of America are compatible with my faith. 

However, current narratives around refugees and immigrants, and actions taken by people in power who claim Christ, are not compatible with my faith. It is not Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) to deny refuge for the poor and oppressed. People of faith who feel that national security comes before mercy for refugees and immigrants have made an idol out of their country. They have placed America above God. 

What is the right response? People of faith should respond in love, of course. But when we see someone making an idol out of anything, we are called to speak up. The most powerfully-worded versus in the Bible are those that speak out against idolatry. We should take the hint and speak out powerfully as well.