Happy Pride!

Rosa Gaia Saunders is from Edmonton, Alberta and attended McGill University. As a Chicago Corps member, she served as a Program Assistant at Free Spirit Media.

When people ask me what my favorite annual holiday is, I don’t think of Rosh Hashanah or Christmas or the Buddhist winter festival of Children’s Day (yes, I had a pretty mixed religious upbringing), I think of pride weekend. True, pride weekend isn’t a holiday, but for me it holds a similar kind of significance: a time to celebrate and reflect on my values, a raucous, festive communal celebration of joy, a moment in the year with its own traditions, rituals and rules.  I love that there is a weekend devoted to not just acceptance, but celebration of gender and sexual diversity. And the rainbow flags, outfits, and signs are a sort of color therapy that lifts my mood for weeks.

One of the first things I inquired about moving to Chicago was pride weekend. I talked with excitement about pride with Daniel, a fellow Corps member, on the first day of orientation. We made a commitment to living pride out in its full spectrum of glorious colors. I’d say we kept our word.

We wanted to spread the word that religious service corps were open to, and made up of LGBT folks and their allies. Members of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps came over the Friday of pride weekend for an inter-faith Shabbat potluck/ banner making party. We decided to participate in the Dyke March in the South Shore, a grassroots response to the main pride parade in Boystown on Sunday that many believe has become overly corporate, hypermasculine, and non-welcoming to many forms of queer identity. The evening was a wonderful, very Chicago AVODAH-esque one: feasting, Shabbat candle lighting, fleet foxes, debate about the inclusivity of the sonically effective “God Loves Gays”, some creative destruction of a mattress cover, a competition to create a shade of purple that would do justice to the hue’s gay-identified history, and a lot of messy painting and laughter. We ended up with a colorful, flamboyant banner that read “GOD LOVES QUEERS” and the names of the participating service corps up top. I would describe it more, and I am tempted to write passionate love poetry about this banner that I swooned over all weekend, but you can take a glance at it below.

In the Dyke march, we crossed paths with a Star of David pride flag on it and connected with Or Chadash, The LGBT synagogue. In the pride parade the following day, we spontaneously slipped into the parade and danced ecstatically down Broadway with the banner, soaking in the colors and excitement. Open and affirming churches and religiously identified people who saw our banner proudly shared in our sentiment. “Yes! God does love Queers! Thank you,” we heard from many people who crowded us with hugs and cheers. We stopped in front of a group of anti-gay protesters and chanted “God Loves Queers,” but we admittedly weren’t half as adorable as the nearby man dressed up as Jesus with a sign that pointed to the protesters and said, “I’m not with them.”

My favorite little treat of the day was the family biking down to the parade with a wee little boy who asked enthusiastically, “Is this the parade where they throw all the colored necklaces?” The mother said yes, and this kid went nuts. “This is my favorite parade! I LOVE this parade! Mom, go faster; I don’t want to miss ANY of it! It’s my favorite parade!” “Happy pride” I said to the family with the 4-year old future LGBT rights activist and biked into the rainbow mass.

Queerness is not just a part of my politics, but a part of my spirituality. I see diversities of sex and gender as beautiful and miraculous. And because I believe that love, sexuality and spirituality are deeply connected, the more forms in which people can love and connect to each other, the more opportunities for divine presence on this earth. Finally, the more we can empathize and appreciate people’s experiences, which are different than our own, the more challenged we are to create a holy world of peace.

Daniel and I gazed at the raucous Chicago pride parade of 2011, its biggest year in Chicago history. “Do you remember talking about this on the first day?” asked Daniel, “We’re here.” Pride seemed at that time an infinite distance away, but we arrived. Pride weekend was in a lot of ways representative of the best parts of AVODAH: fun, community oriented, intentional and even spiritual. After the spectrum of colors faded from Broadway, I re-hung my well-loved, well-tattered rainbow Canadian flag up on my wall with pride.

Note: for more heartwarming AVODAH-related queer positivity check out the It Gets Better Video I edited from footage recorded by students at my placement this year.

Connections

Daniel Weyl is from Hillsborough, NJ and attended Beloit College. He spoke about his experience as an AVODAH Corps member at the Chicago Partners in Justice Event honoring Rachel Durchslag and Roberta Rakove on June 1, 2011. His remarks follow below.

Snow-covered streets, freezing temperatures, and frostbitten hands—a regular February day in Chicago. I was rushing to take a family to DHS, the public aid office, where they had their interview to receive government benefits: food stamps, cash assistance, and Medicaid. The father carefully held their documents and other paperwork. The mother focused on tending to her young and rambunctious son. And in my arms, I carried the baby of the family, a precious three-year-old girl. As I placed her gently in a car seat in my office van, I was suddenly moved by the tenderness of the moment. I realized that over the course of the month since they had arrived from Iraq, I had become a part of the fabric of this family’s life. Greeting them at the airport upon their arrival, meeting with them regularly for appointments, advocating on their behalf in a professional setting, and exchanging words over tea and snacks in their home, I had cultivated a meaningful relationship with this family, one where it was completely natural for me to pick up the baby as we collectively schlepped to our appointment. This is one of the many families I have had the opportunity to meet as a caseworker for refugees at the Ethiopian Community Association. The past ten months have been incredibly rewarding, as well as challenging, and sometimes discouraging.

I have often found myself wishing I could do more to help, to be of more service, to make a greater difference in these family’s lives. But then I would remind myself of the impact I have simply by being present and making a personal connection. Although I cannot always solve their problems, I have found I can provide much needed comfort during a difficult, often scary, transition to a new country.

Sometimes it took just a smile or a laugh. A young Bhutanese client of mine, a seventeen-year-old boy, came into my office one afternoon. His parents do not speak English, and so he has assumed the role of communicating to the office and navigating the system of public assistance. He sat down beside me and asked me how he and his family were going to pay the electric bill. I said, “Well, you’ll need to use some of the cash you and your parents get from the public aid office.” He looked at me blankly, so I asked him, “How much money is left for the month?” His face widened as he broke into a huge grin and began to laugh. “Mr. Daniel, there is no money. There is no money,” he repeated as he let out a chuckle. What else was I to do but join in his laughter and commiserate with him as he faced a situation that felt insurmountable?

I have learned this year that many of my clients’ hardships cannot and will not be eradicated by the services my agency renders. They are climbing mountains and facing obstacles I can’t remove. But what makes the mountain seem less steep is having someone to walk beside them, and that I can do.

Having participated in social justice programs throughout my life, I did not expect to be so affected by this work. I believe what distinguishes this year of service for me is the deep connections I have made with my clients. Had I not had personal relationships with them, it would have been easy to emotionally remove myself from the issues at hand. However, having become emotionally involved, I no longer see them as refugees who are poor, but as my families who are suffering from poverty.

When I have been overwhelmed with work, or troubled by personal matters, I have been so fortunate to have my relationships with the other Avodahniks to sustain me. I cannot imagine making it through this year without their compassion, insight, and support.

AVODAH provides young people with a unique experience; it offers us an opportunity to grow and be seriously challenged in a nurturing, encouraging environment. All of us are navigating social service and social justice work and the fact that we can come home and vent to someone who understands what we’re going through has been unbelievably comforting.

Many of our jobs intersect, so it is not uncommon for us to refer our own clients to another’s agency; I’ve called up Rebecca at Inspiration Corporation for help with a housing application for a newly arrived family from Bhutan. I have also conferred with and shared resources with Alizah, who works at Apna Ghar, a domestic violence agency for women from Southeast Asia.

It is because the work we do is so draining that it becomes absolutely critical for us to connect to others in the same field. Through informal conversations around the dinner table and also during programs where we’ve been privileged to meet other non-profit workers throughout the city, AVODAH has created a space for us to reflect on our responsibility, evaluate the work we’re doing, challenge existing structures, including those in the not-for-profit sector, and collectively envision a better world. The connections we form with other corps members and program speakers allow us to carry on with a greater sense of hope, because we know we’re not in this struggle alone.

Learning about all of the life changing work people like Rachel Durchslag and Roberta Rakove do inspires and motivates us to return to our jobs reenergized. It also affords us the chance to think about what kind of work we might wish to pursue in the future.

We also have learned along the way how important it is to take care of ourselves and carve out time for fun, and yep, Avodahniks do that pretty well too I’d say. It honestly sometimes feels like I get to have a sleepover every night, laughing with friends late into the evening, snuggling up to watch Glee, dishing about our weekend escapades.

It also has been wonderful to find myself immersed in a Jewish community once again. I went to a mostly secular liberal arts school in Wisconsin, where the Jewish scene was far from thriving, and though at the time I did not mind that, it was only until this year that I realized what I had been missing. I love making Shabbat with my housemates. We congregate around the table as Andrea lights the Sabbat candles and we all recite the blessings. After a long hard week, it is so special to rest and share with family a hearty meal and hearty laughs. While I believe people can explore and experiment with their religion at any stage in their life, I appreciate the fact that all of us have had the time and space this year to wrestle with our faith and figure out what is important to us as social justice oriented Jews, and AVODAH has done much to facilitate this journey of questioning and self-exploration.

Which brings me to the final, most fundamental connection that this program has nurtured, and that is a deeper connection to ourselves. On a daily basis, we have been forced to ask ourselves tough questions. At work, we are confronted with injustice and have to ask ourselves how we can combat it. In programs, we process our work and critically examine current solutions to the world’s problems, discovering what role we might see ourselves taking. At home, through house meetings, communal chores and cooking, just by sharing space, we make conscious decisions as to how we want to contribute to the community, what sort of house members we want to be, what sort of friends.

This year, I’ve asked more questions than I’ve found answers. I am perhaps even less sure after this year than I was previously about what sort of work I want to do, in what way do I want to impact society and how might I make a meaningful difference. What will that look like? What kind of Jew do I wish to become? Have I found a healthy balance of doing tikkun olam, being a good housemate, being an active community member, and giving to myself?

Years from now, I may still be asking myself many of the same questions I have today, but I am so confident that I will always look back on my year with AVODAH as one that set a foundation for deeper learning, deeper loving, and a deeper understanding of my role in the fight for social change. For this, and for all the beautiful connections I have made the year, I feel blessed.

Passover and Israel’s Independence: Reflections on Mimouna

Alizah Benchetrit is from Vaughn, Ontario and attended the University of Toronto. She is a Community Advocate at Apna Ghar, an organization which provides culturally-appropriate, multilingual services, including emergency shelter, to survivors of domestic abuse with a primary focus on the South Asian and other immigrant communities.

Following this year’s Passover, I hosted Mimouna, a Moroccan Jewish holiday, with the Chicago AVODAH community. We celebrated with friends and neighbors, whose own diverse backgrounds – hailing from Israel, India, and Iran (to name a few), and faiths, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,  captured the spirit of the tradition.

Moroccan-Jews traditionally celebrate Mimouna at the end of chag, the evening of the last day of Passover. The door is left open and guests arrive without invitation. Family, friends and neighbors gather to break the week-long prohibition on eating leavened bread and mark the beginning of spring.

In Morocco, Jews invited their Muslim neighbors to their homes and it was customary for Muslim neighbors to bring a basket of yeast and flour. It was a gift to their Jewish neighbors that was much needed, since Jews could not buy flour at the market until the following day. The flour was used by the women of the house, who would gather to knead dough and prepare mufleta, a crepe filled with honey and butter, served at every Mimouna.

The Mimouna Table - traditionally set with refreshments for guests such as wine, fruits, nuts and sweets and symbols of prosperity, fertility and spring.

Back to School

Liz London is from New York City. She graduated from Vassar College in May of last year after concentrating in creative writing. As a Chicago Corps member she works as a Program Assistant at America SCORES Chicago, a soccer, creative writing and service learning after-school program.

I have spent my entire life in school, until now. It’s surprising then, that my greatest learning about school has come since being out of it. Partly it is due to the clarity and change in perspective that comes from more distance. Partly it is due to working at an after-school program and, correspondingly, the time and investment I’ve put into observing and studying schools and education. But more precisely, this year is about unlearning and then relearning schools on the most basic level: what is a school, what is education and what is their relationship to each other? It is not so much about acquiring new knowledge and information as it is about revising the “knowledge” I took for granted.

My experience in school is intrinsically linked to my privilege. I don’t mean attending private school or being in racially and socio-economically homogenous populations, neither of which is representative of my pre-college schooling. I mean that one of the main pillars of privilege is an idolization of education as the key to success for, more or less, all people. Consequently, a school’s primary role is to house this education; it didn’t occur to me that the purpose of schools might be more fundamental than that.

My Many Different Hats

Ben Levine is from New York, NY and attended the University of Rochester. He is a Chicago Corps member working as a Youth Leadership Corps Member at Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation, which works to foster and promote revitalization of the low-to-moderate income neighborhoods of Auburn-Gresham, Englewood and West Chatham.

Throughout this year, I have had quite a few people ask me about my job. During the summer before I started AVODAH, I told my friends and family that I would be running an after-school program similar to a student government, but with a focus on youth advocacy and school development. I was hired by the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation, a community based organization which helps redevelop the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood through a comprehensive development plan. Six months into the job though, when asked what it is that I do, I know to give a multi-faceted answer. The list usually includes: after-school leader, social worker, administrator, and earth science teacher. The list seems long, and when I think about it, it is. However, somehow I manage to squeeze it all in. While it might seem a little bit crazy, somehow it all makes sense. So here is a day in my life at work in my role as the Youth Development Coordinator at Perspectives Middle Academy.

How Small Things Can Make a Big Difference

Rebecca Ratner is from Golden Valley, MN and attended Brandeis University. As a Chicago Corps member,  she is a Housing and Supportive Services Assistant at Inspiration Corporation, an organization that helps people who are affected by homelessness and poverty to improve their lives and increase self-sufficiency through the provision of social services, employment training and placement, and housing, in an atmosphere of dignity and respect.

My commute to work takes about 20-minutes. I know I am extremely lucky to have such a short ride, considering many of my fellow Corps members travel over an hour to get to their placements. And yet, within those 20 minutes, I am transported into an entirely different world. I leave the cozy coffee shops of Andersonville and the delicious bakeries on Clark Street, and I enter into Uptown, an area with one of the densest populations of homeless individuals in Chicago. There are several shelters within a four block radius of my office on Broadway and Wilson, each catering to a different population. One has services for families, another is specifically for men. There are two more that are focused on helping women or women with children and another close by that helps ex-offenders.

I work at Inspiration Corporation, a non profit that provides case management, employment training programs, and restaurant style meals to the homeless population in Chicago. My job is to do Open Case Management, a program that assists individuals coming from shelters, the streets, or other social service agencies and who are interested in getting involved in our programs. I help them with housing, inform them about the various services we offer, and get them referrals for clothes, medical care, dental care, and shelters. Two times a week for two hours the halls are lined with people waiting to see me, waiting to tell me their stories. Each person wants and needs something different, and it’s my job to figure out how I can help.

People Power and Politics

Debra Fricano is from Little Neck, NY and attended Brandeis University. As a Chicago Corps member, she is a Community Organizer at Lakeview Action Coalition, which is an organization acting to sustain racial and economic diversity in the Chicago communities of Lakeview and North Center and to build bridges between community members.

In the community organizing world, we are told that there are two kinds of power – money power and people power. We often have to spend a lot of time and energy fundraising, applying for grants and soliciting donors, to barely make a dent in accessing money power. Instead, we pride ourselves on our leadership development, on strategic actions, and on our web of relationships – people power. The People, united in shared values, strive to hold corporations/politicians/”the system” accountable to serving the interests of the community.

Photo courtesy of Jewish Council on Urban Affairs

Okay, so what does this ACTUALLY look like? This year, Chicago politics are truly windy, as Mayor Daley, who has been in office for the past 22 years, is stepping down. There is a vacancy in the most powerful position in one of the most influential cities in the country, and democracy can finally take root. Within the past two months, 27 community based nonprofit organizations formed a coalition called New Chicago 2011.  A relatively small group of like-minded individuals collaborated to plan a Town Hall Mayoral Candidates Forum for December 14th where we would ask the top six candidates about the things that we care about. Our platform of shared social justice issues was: affordable housing, jobs and economic development, education, violence prevention, financial accountability, and human rights. Each group of the coalition committed to bringing out one-hundred community members. The candidates in attendance, who received the most, or more than 35,000 nomination signatures were: Gery Chico, Danny Davis, Miguel del Valle, Carol Moseley Braun, James Meeks, and Patricia Watkins. The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs was gracious enough to give the AVODAH Corps members tickets to come see the event.

“So… How’s Chicago?”

Daniel Riff is from Palo Alto, CA and attended Washington University in St. Louis majoring in history and minoring in political science. As a Chicago Corps member he is a Housing Resource Specialist at Heartland Alliance, which helps people living in poverty or danger improve their lives and realize their human rights.

Around any major transition, there seems to be a question everyone asks.

Late in high school it’s “Where do you want to go to college?” or “Where are you going to college?” During freshman year of college it’s “How’s school?” Or as a Californian who moved to St. Louis: “How are you dealing with the weather?” And last year it was, “What are you doing next year?”

Going home for Thanksgiving, I wasn’t quite sure what the question would be. Would it focus on my job? My house? My program?

“How’s Chicago?” just about everyone asked.

“Great!” “It’s amazing.” “It’s a real city!” “Not that cold (yet)!” “There’s so much to do!” And sometimes, “It has a lot of problems, but I really like it.”

Locating My Baggage

Liz London is from New York City. She graduated from Vassar College last May after concentrating in Creative Writing. As a Chicago Corps member she works as a Program Assistant at America SCORES Chicago.

Driving through North Lawndale there is little to see, or rather there is much to see that amounts to very little. Boarded-up houses are as common as not and most every building seems to be in dire need of maintenance. One of the few businesses I’ve seen, a hole-in-the-wall simply named, Corner Store, across the street from my bus stop at Roosevelt Avenue, is more meeting ground than a stop for customers. Grown men sit on plastic crates in Douglas Park in the middle of the workday. North Lawndale, or Community Area 29, looks, to an outsider at least, like an abandoned landscape that many Chicagoans care to erase from their mental map.

I work at a school in North Lawndale implementing the writing portion of America SCORES Chicago’s writing/soccer after-school program. I meet with my team of twelve third to fifth grade girls several times a week to do poetry and dramatic exercises that culminate in a public performance at the Community Poetry Slam. In the abstract, North Lawndale is an inner city, one of the “bad” neighborhoods, rife with poverty, gangs, drugs, violence, abuse, poor education, etc. Yet there is a rich and complex history that helps to concretize it as a unique neighborhood and community.

New Life, New Conceptions

Rosa Gaia Saunders is from Edmonton, Alberta and attended McGill University. As a Chicago Corps member, she works as a Program Assistant at Free Spirit Media which provides education, access, and opportunity in media production to over 500 underserved urban youth every year.

AVODAH thus far has been a series of paradoxes. The journey so far has been a solitary, internal one, yet I am constantly connected to different communities, constantly in contact with people, and constantly defining myself by my relations with others. It has strengthened my resolve is social justice, while calling into question for me whether there is, in practice or theory, such a thing. It has encouraged me to live with active compassion while bringing into focus the impossibility of knowing another persons affective state or historical circumstance. It has enriched my sense of Jewish identity while destabilizing notions of both Judaism and identity.  It has ripped the rug from under me and grounded me as well, offered me a place to stand on issues even as I wobble clumsily between the contradictory values I try to embody. It has given me footing in this new life yet placed me in a state of perpetual groundlessness. I feel enriched yet hollow, energized and exhausted, driven and hopeless, deeply saddened and ecstatically joyful.