The Case for Asylum in These Less Than United States
(Common Dreams) In late March, I sat in the gallery of the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. Throughout my 30 years of grassroots anti-poverty work, I’ve joined countless protests and vigils outside the Court. In 2018, I was even arrested and held in detention for praying on its palatial steps.
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This spring, local leaders in Vermont, Alabama, Kansas and Illinois are preparing for a summer Season of Survival Revivals with the Kairos Center. From New England to the Heartland to the Deep South, communities are coming together to understand their shared needs, lay claim to their collective rights, and get organized for the long haul.
“This will not be a ‘one-and-done’ process,” explains Rev. Carolyn Foster of Greater Birmingham Ministries. “We are taking this revival to the people where they gather and we are organizing to break our isolation, to reach people who need mutual aid, but aren’t connected to organization or movement. We want to bring people into community with one another…and work towards transformative change.”
Revivals have a long history in this country. In the 19th century, tent revivals were used to spread abolitionism and grow the movement to end slavery. In the 20th century, revivals brought Black and white tenant farmers together to organize for their rights. Drawing on faith and cultural traditions to build politicized communities, revivals have centered ordinary people—especially poor and low-income people—as knowledge holders, not just recipients of services. Today’s Survival Revivals apply this same form to the conditions people are enduring right now.
Each Survival Revivals site embodies a distinct history and set of current conditions shaped by poverty, disinvestment, environmental injustice, housing insecurity, food insecurity, family separation, police violence, detention, incarceration, and much more. But, they have also produced grounded community identity, strong relationships, and deep insights that too often go unheard.
As Lydia Graves, an art teacher from Birmingham describes, “The revivals will be spaces where people can speak honestly about what survival looks like in their neighborhood, where their experiences are treated as collective knowledge, not isolated struggle, and where long-term demands and shared leadership can be formed.”
These pictures offer a glimpse of the emergent hope we’ve seen this spring, the beginnings of much more to come this summer and beyond.
To stay in the loop for the #survivalrevival, follow:
Greater Birmingham Ministries
Baptist Church of the Covenant
The Alton Mission
Loud Light
WyCo Mutual Aid
Kansas Interfaith Action
First Presbyterian Church of Springfield, Illinois
Vermont Workers' Center
Northeast Kingdom Organizing
Kingdom United Resilience & Recovery
Migrant Justice / Justicia Migrante
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