The Rev. Jesse Jackson addressed CHANGE’s annual fall assembly in Winston-Salem. “We learned a bad lesson well —how to survive apart — and must learn to live together,” Jackson told those in attendance. [photo by Keith T. Barber]
The more than 1,000 delegates from the Winston-Salem chapter of Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment, or CHANGE, all rose to their feet inside Union Baptist Church and welcomed a surprise visitor to their annual fall assembly with thunderous applause.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson stepped into the pulpit and addressed the CHANGE delegates, who had come from a vast cross-section of area churches to attend the Nov. 1 event.
“To see you sitting here together is such a beautiful thing,” Jackson said. “We learned a bad lesson well — how to survive apart — and must learn to live together. Living together is more difficult than surviving apart, but is more rewarding than surviving apart. The great issues of our time take us from racial battleground to economic common ground and moral higher ground.”
Perhaps no other figure in American politics represents the intrinsic role of the church in our nation’s political landscape more than Jackson. Therefore, his appearance at the delegates’ assembly was only fitting. And Jackson wasn’t the only political heavy-hitter in attendance. US Senate candidate Kenneth Lewis also attended the Nov. 1 assembly.
After Jackson’s brief remarks, the Rev. Susan Parker, CHANGE’s cochair, outlined the group’s public policy victories of the past year. Parker spoke of CHANGE’s key role in persuading legislators in the NC General Assembly to pass a bill that makes school board elections in Forsyth County non-partisan during the legislature’s summer session.
On June 8, the North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 833. The Winston-Salem chapter of CHANGE spearheaded the campaign. Prior to the passage of the bill, which was championed by state Senator Linda Garrou (D-Forsyth), Forsyth County represented one of only 10 school districts that did not follow North Carolina state statutes, which call for non-partisan school board elections.
“We hope this development will help us reach beyond politics and focus our community on issues that are of direct impact to our children rather than on following issues determined by political parties,” Parker said. “Further, this should lead to candidates desiring to campaign more actively, helping all voters understand their educational priorities for our students.”
The passage of the bill speaks volumes about CHANGE’s ability to influence public policy, said Rabbi Mark Strauss-Cohn.
“Education is a non-partisan issue,” he said. “And while some things are, and some things are not white or black, Democrat or Republican, non-believer or devout follower, the school board is not a place to highlight those differences.”
CHANGE’s Dayenin Arellano spoke about the group’s victory in winning a $2 million grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for its childhood lead poisoning prevention project last month. Arellano attributed CHANGE’s successful grant application to the hard work and diligence of its Health and Wellness Action Team.
And so it went. CHANGE’s action teams on health and wellness, economic development and education gave its assembled members updates on efforts to help improve the lives of all Forsyth residents. The Rev. Kelly Carpenter of Green Street Methodist Church updated members on CHANGE’s “10 percent is enough” campaign against Bank of America and Wachovia/Wells Fargo. On Oct. 2, CHANGE members took a bus trip to Charlotte to speak with corporate officials about the group’s efforts to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, Carpenter said. CHANGE representatives have since met with Wachovia/ Wells Fargo officials and scheduled another meeting to discuss the group’s economic development agenda.
During the Nov. 1 meeting, Pastor Sharon Turner and Alain Lamarque addressed what they called the city of Winston-Salem’s inadequate response to the victims of the Alder’s Point fire in July. Lamarque laid out CHANGE’s agenda to help the city improve its emergency services for disaster victims. Lamarque said CHANGE would encourage city and county officials to reconstitute Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, or VOAD, which would bring a community presence to the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Office of Emergency Management. Lamarque outlined other items on CHANGE’s health and wellness agenda. Then, he and Dave Ferguson, a member of group’s economic development team, asked the Winston- Salem City Council members and city council candidates in attendance if they supported CHANGE’s agenda.
Lamarque asked the candidates if they would advocate the reconstitution of VOAD, and meet with the leadership of CHANGE in 90 days to review the city’s emergency management plan. Ferguson asked if the council members and candidates would support increasing the percentage of city contracts that go to minority-owned businesses.
Mayor Allen Joines responded affirmatively to all three questions. Joines and all the other elected officials and candidates on hand were each given 90 seconds to speak to the assembly.
“You’ve held my feet to the fire on many occasions, and I hope you will agree I’ve been responsive to the issues you’ve brought forward,” Joines said to a round of applause. “Eight years ago, I promised that I would devote my life to making our city a better place. We took some bold steps — me and the city council. We had to do that to get our city moving again, to get our economy back on track. I’ve worked hard and with your help, with the help of many, many others, we have moved this city forward.”
Joines outlined his achievements during his first two terms in office, and openly asked the CHANGE delegates for their vote in the Nov. 3 general election. Joines is running unopposed.
“This election is not about stadiums or the Dell project, it’s about who we are as a community,” Joines said. “Do we want to build our community on optimism and positive energy or do we want to fall back to the pessimism and negativism and divisiveness that was here eight years ago?” One after the other, city council members Dan Besse, Robert Clark, Vivian Burke and Wanda Merschel pledged to cooperate with CHANGE’s initiatives regarding the city’s emergency management plan and its policy on awarding of city contracts to minority-owned businesses. City council candidates Derwin Montgomery, Denise “DD” Adams, Peter Sorensen and Claudia Shivers all agreed to CHANGE’S agenda as well.
The voting power of the Forsyth County chapter of CHANGE is undeniable, and the elected officials and candidates in attendance showed great deference to the group’s sweeping influence.
CHANGE is described as “a multiracial, multi-faith, non-partisan community organizing group comprised of 53 dues-paying congregations, neighborhood associations and other interested groups.”
Rabbi Mark Strauss-Cohn most aptly described the group’s overarching mission for engaging civic and political leaders in discussions on fairness and equality for all. Strauss-Cohn utilized the biblical example of Abraham to drive his point home.
“We do not seek the overthrow of our civic institutions,” Strauss-Cohn said. “Rather we, like Abraham, want to ask questions and strive to work together in a goodly and I dare say, a godly way — to define what is right, to secure what is just, to create that which is sustainable for the best of all our citizenry and the best for all our citizenry.
“May we do so in peace and health, in safety and in partnership with one another, our elected officials and all concerned interests,” Strauss-Cohn continued. “May all of us go on together in strength.”
THE MINISTERS CONFERENCE OF WINSTON-SALEM
On Sept. 11, the Rev. Carlton AG Eversley, president of the Ministers Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity, stood on the steps of the Forsyth County Hall of Justice before television cameras and news reporters. Other Ministers Conference members and concerned citizens stood beside and behind Eversley as he read a statement demanding that Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith resign immediately.
“Mr. Keith’s apparently stubbornly held, virulently racist white-supremacist and wildly inaccurate views that, ‘If you are African American you are six, seven or eight times or some figure more likely to have a violent history,’ is at the core of the problem for Kalvin Michael Smith or any other black person accused of violent crimes in Forsyth County,” Eversley said, referring to a quote attributed to Keith in an Aug. 26 YES! Weekly article entitled, “Forsyth DA: Racial Justice act inherently flawed.”
The original quote attributed to Keith read as follows: “If you’re African American, you’re six, seven or eight times more likely to have a violent history. I didn’t go out there and say, “you commit eight crimes, and I’ma a white man, I’ll commit one.’ That’s just instincts, that’s just how it is.”
On Sept. 9, YES! Weekly issued a correction to the quote attributed to Keith. The district attorney actually said, “That’s just statistics. That’s how it is.”
Eversley said the difference of one word in a newspaper article was irrelevant in the context of the larger issues raised by Keith’s statements on the Racial Justice Act.
The Ministers Conference statement came just three days after a group of mostly white clergy gathered on the steps of Wait Chapel on the Wake Forest University campus and also called for Keith to resign from the post he’s held for nearly two decades. The group also requested the city of Winston-Salem petition the court for a full and immediate release of the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee report, and file a “friend of the court” brief with the NC Court of Appeals supporting Smith’s request for a new trial.
Upon hearing of YES! Weekly’s correction, Parker, Carpenter and the Rev. Steve Boyd issued a statement that read, in part, “the accurate statement with the word ‘statistics’ is still cause for concern for some. We do not believe that African
Americans are more violent than white people and we remain concerned about racial disparities in the criminal justice system generally, and Forsyth County specifically.”
Eversley acknowledged the heavy criticism the group of concerned white clergy members received after the Sept. 9 correction to the YES! Weekly article, but said they had nothing to apologize for.
“The problem we have is the district attorney of Forsyth County, the lead law enforcement official, believes that there is this wildly disproportionate [predisposition] to violence by black people,” Eversley said. “What [Keith] said that was so wrong was that he mischaracterized a whole demographic group and criminalized them. Now what he based that on is wholly irrelevant — ‘instincts’ or ‘statistics.’ We just think that makes him unfit to serve.”
The Rev. Carlton AG Eversley, president of the Ministers Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity, said his group puts out a voter guide for local and national elections to help his congregants select candidates that best represent their interests. [photo by Keith T. Barber]
Eversley said the white ministers’ experience of enduring harsh criticism was most likely a new experience for them. But it’s nothing new for the city’s black ministers he said. This is due to the fact that, historically speaking, the role of predominantly black churches has always been different from that of predominantly white churches.
“The white folks have, they’ve got the chamber of commerce, the city council, the county commission,” Eversley said. “They have all kinds of outlets for their expressed public needs. Black people bring all that to the church, whether it’s housing, economic development, politics, educational issues, labor issues, issues of criminal justice, war and peace — all of that comes to the black church.”
Eversley said a group like CHANGE comes straight out of the biblical tradition.
“CHANGE is the largest and broadest organizations probably in the history of the city,” Eversley said. “The fact it is faith based is much to its credit. From a Christian perspective, it’s absolutely biblical. Jesus came announcing a Kingdom of God — it’s not something [private]. Jesus addressed issues of economic disparity, health care, criminal justice.”
Eversley said those who would criticize CHANGE for bringing politics into the church “just don’t get it.”
“If you want to help people, you can’t ignore the biggest elephant in the room, which is the government,” Eversley said. “If you actually want to help poor people, people without health insurance, people needing criminal redress, decent education, people needing decent housing, decent health care, to ignore the government is to be an ass.”
The Rev. John Mendez, the pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church and a member of the Ministers Conference, echoed Eversley’s sentiments. Mendez said to assume that the church should not be involved in issues of education, health care and equal justice is “to assume there’s a place in this universe where God is not present and not concerned.”
“There’s a need for a witness from the church in all those areas,” Mendez added.
Eversley pointed out that the church has both a priestly role, which is “to bind people’s wounds up, but the church also has a prophetic role, which is to speak to the social order,” he said.
“You can’t be a conservative and be a prophet of God, because God is always discontented and dissatisfied with the social order,” Eversley continued. “God is always pushing humanity toward an evolved and utopian and beatific vision, so if you’re satisfied with monopoly capitalism the way it is or the whole idea of a military/industrial complex, or in the case of Tom Keith, this sort of racial caste system of white supremacy and castigation of everybody else who’s not white, then you’re not in the prophetic tradition of God exemplified by Jesus. It’s really as simple as that.”
Eversley said the Ministers Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity puts out a voter guide during national and local elections to help its congregants select the candidates that best represent their interests. The Ministers Conference no longer endorses candidates for office, but the group did endorse Jesse Jackson during his presidential runs in 1984 and 1988. Eversley pointed out that Jackson carried Forsyth County during the state’s Democratic presidential primary in 1984 and 1988 due in large part to the influence and organizing ability of the Ministers Conference.
The impact of black churches and local and national political races is unde niable.
“When people want to impact the black community on an electoral basis, they come to churches,” Eversley said.
THE INSTITUTE FOR DISMANTLING RACISM
While faith-based groups like CHANGE and the Ministers Conference of Winston-Salem focus on making changes to public policy, the Institute for Dismantling Racism focuses its education efforts on changing our civic and government institutions from within, said the Rev. Willard Bass, who founded the institute in 2004.
Borne out of his experiences at Wake Forest Divinity School, Bass said the institute was formed after the Rev. Kelly Carpenter hired him to be an associate pastor at Green Street Methodist Church. The mission of the institute is straightforward: to provide a roadmap for civic, government and business leaders to eliminate racism within their organizations.
The Rev. John Mendez, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, said that to assume the church should not be involved in political issues is to assume that there’s a place in the universe where God is not concerned. [photo by Keith T. Barber]
The institute offers a rare opportunity for elected officials who promise a more inclusive, open-minded city government, police force or district attorney’s office to actually take concrete steps towards making those promises a reality, Bass said.
“Mayor [Allen Joines] has committed that Winston-Salem will become a more inclusive city in the future and for that to happen, we need to be authentic in how we plan to get there,” he said. “And it means we need to be dealing with more issues around what separates us — our own ethos and how we’re operating out of, the context of a historical way of being here in Winston-Salem, which has been very separatist.”
The key to understanding why racism still exists in Winston-Salem is to study our collective history, or “the way different institutions have existed and influenced individuals through their cultures and their way of being within the institutions,” Bass said The Institute for Dismantling Racism, or IDR, helps program participants to understand the historical context of their attitudes on race and then go deeper.
“If we’re operating out of a historical context, which we see as being not helpful today, then how do we move them to a different place?” Bass asked rhetorically.
To achieve that aim, IDR offers resources where participants interface with one another, and meet monthly to “continue to look at themselves and their attitudes about race in a critical fashion,” Bass said.
“We try to get people to be intentional about how they understand and how they see things on a daily basis, and then are able to reflect on that with individuals who are like-minded,” he continued. “Individuals are afraid to stand alone but if you have groups of people who are willing engage in this new way of being, it seems to be more effective.”
Bass said a number of city officials have gone through the IDR training as well as several police officers with the Winston-Salem Police Department. However, the number of police officers participating in the program has dropped dramatically since Chief Scott Cunningham took office more than a year ago, he added.
Bass stood in solidarity with the concerned clergy members who called for Tom Keith’s resignation on Sept. 11. Bass said he believes the Forsyth County DA’s Office is operating out of a historical context when it comes to meting
out justice, and that in order to change institutions like the DA’s office, the work must come from within.
“By us educating people around this whole notion of how race and how racism operates, I think we’ll be in a better place morally,” he said. “We’ll be in a better place ethically and then when we start planning about jobs and planning a future for our community, it will involve an awareness of everyone.”
The Rev. Willard Bass, founder of the Institute for Dismantling Racism, said the institute focuses its education efforts on changing our civic and government institutions from within by making citizens confront their attitudes about race. [photo by Keith T. Barber]
