Justice Briefing - June v.1
“For 36 years we have acted to restore our communities lot by lot, block by block, school by school and neighborhood by neighborhood. We have safer lobbies, greener parks and better-lit streets because of action by EBC leaders. Our neighborhoods didn’t gentrify — they regenerated.”
This article reflects on a lot of what Trellis is seeking to accomplish. These churches believe serving the needs and opportunities of the community is an endeavor done better together. It is beautiful to see churches working across denominational lines to strengthen and support the neighborhoods they live and congregate in. This active and purposeful partnership is what Jesus says in John 17 will show a watching world that God is real.
“The problem is that they are trying to change things,” Millan said. “The Spanish community has been here 70 years. People worked hard to establish this community.
The neighborhood isn’t supposed to adjust to you,” Millan said. “You are supposed to adjust to the neighborhood.”
Gentrification is an ongoing reality in urban centers around the US. In thinking about where and how we live in our neighborhoods, this article unveils how different people groups see, experience and understand our community. As Christians move into New York, Jesus' heart is that we would come first as listeners and learners, seeing and celebrating the existing flavor before we try and bring our own. This blog is inviting people to read Staying is the New Going, a great book to help understand how we can learn to gentrify with justice.
“The New York City public-school system is 41 percent Latino, 27 percent black and 16 percent Asian. Three-quarters of all students are low-income. In 2014, the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, released a report showing that New York City public schools are among the most segregated in the country. Black and Latino children here have become increasingly isolated, with 85 percent of black students and 75 percent of Latino students attending “intensely” segregated schools — schools that are less than 10 percent white.
Research stretching back 50 years shows that the socioeconomic makeup of a school can play a larger role in achievement than the poverty of an individual student’s family.
One family, or even a few families, cannot transform a segregated school, but if none of us were willing to go into them, nothing would change. Putting our child into a segregated school would not integrate it racially, but we are middle-class and would, at least, help to integrate it economically.
True integration, true equality, requires a surrendering of advantage, and when it comes to our own children, that can feel almost unnatural. ”
Please consider reading this whole article. It is such a helpful and honest look at the wrestling that many parents in New York face when considering school options for their children in view of their ethnicity, family history and economic situation.
This article is a reminder of the tangled complexity and the hard but necessary work of addressing social justice issues like education, housing development and discrimination.
In view of these articles, Robert Lupton shares his experiences and insights on how we can think carefully and Biblically about justice in his great book, Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life
“Redistribution is putting our lives, our skills, our education, and our resources to work to empower [as well as learn from and support] people in a community of need”