Four equity teams of Parkway UCC spent a good portion of 2021 looking into the historic realities of inequity in our local community, interviewing those doing work to repair the harm, and identifying ways our congregation could come alongside that work. Currently we are continuing the following initiatives as a result of this investigation:
- Support of the Forsyth County Community Supported Agriculture project with local black farmers in partnership with RAFI-USA, the Ministers Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity and Janco Farms;
- Active support of the SHARE Food Coop and Harvest Market;
- Collaboration with grassroots organizations working to make improvements to the WSFC Schools school assignment design;
- Support of scholarships with the Hispanic League for Latina/Latino/Latinx nursing students, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund of the Ministers Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity;
- Support of Housing Justice Now initiatives and calls to improve responsiveness on code enforcement issues with low-income housing residents;
- Active participation in the discernment of a multi-racial, broad-based community organizing effort in Winston-Salem building on the work of the North Carolina Congress of Latino Organizations
Join the Movement
Unveiled at the 2021 General Synod as the successor to the 3 Great Loves campaign, Join the Movement toward Racial Justice will get a special kickoff the week of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, starting Jan. 17, including the launch of new features at the movement’s website. Already, churches are invited to sign up for alerts and begin formulating their own stories of how they work for racial justice in Jesus’ name. “Movements are dynamic and inspiring,” said UCC Minister for Racial Justice Velda Love. “The Join the Movement campaign will represent cultural expressions, lived experiences, and local advocacy and activism across the country. We hope to capture and develop stories sharing experiences focused on racial justice trainings, reparations initiatives, and transformational anti-racism opportunities for healing, hope and restoration.”
White Fragility Group
This group meets every three weeks on Wednesday Noon to examine personal responses to experiences of having their racial position challenged, as outlined in Robin DeAngelo’s book White Fragility. The group views and reads a variety of additional resources to get in touch with participation in internalized white supremacy.
Second Sunday: Addressing Racialized Trauma
On the second Sunday of each month at 9:15 from November 2021 through May 2022, we will be working with the book by Resma Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands, experiencing practices and seeking to get in touch with bodily reactions and ways to calm and activate our nervous systems to more effectively become co-conspirators in equity work.