REFLECTIONS ON THE INTERFAITH ALLIANCE ON POVERTY
PRESENTED AT FIRST THURSDAY MEETING, JUNE 4, 2020
PASTOR DON FRAZIER
GENESIS COMMUNITY FELLOWSHIP
The Way Forward
I have been feeling a little distant because of dealing with recent issues and deciding that in our community I needed to look for new leadership that could bring fresh eyes and a fresh vision to our work of reconciliation in a community that is going through gentrification.
Thank God that he sent us Ricardo Barber who has attended Moody and is working on his degree in ministry while teaching 4th grade at Faubion School. He is energetic and can relate to all kinds of people.
So, I will be mentoring Ricardo for a time. He will he taking over at Genesis in 2021. I will then just walk around and look important. We all know how that goes.
I have been coming when I could and you’re not getting rid of me that easily. I intend to stay connected to this group.
I have long said that when White America gets a cold, African America gets the flu and that truth has become self-evident in these weeks of covid and these deaths.
If we are going to understand each other, we have to be intentional about reaching out because people who have lived through the hard things are going to be distrustful of surface connections.
During this recent time, I have become hopeful. I see that people are beginning to understand what our community has lived through. I see a turn out of all races and of people understanding what racism has done to others.
In 1968, I was a sophomore at Lincoln High. I was an angry young man, but I have mellowed. Now, I look for solutions. But I have buried many young men involved in gang activity. I have brought ministers together to work on that issue.
When people are degraded and devalued, and made to feel inferior, it is hard to trust.
I believe in working for solutions in our community and have felt that sometimes I am juggling two glass globes. I have a commitment to my community, having worked in many capacities and with Promise Keepers for two years until that stopped. Sometimes, when you work with two communities, you wonder where you fit.
But I have come to these meetings whenever I could, and some of the things I have learned about poverty have been a revelation to me. These are things that need to be shared in my community as well, but the distrust will make that have to be an intentional sharing, back and forth.
I thank you for your advocacy and commitment. Thank God for all of you. I will continue to be around. Now I’m off to a Zoom meeting with Senator Merkely and other African-American ministers. I will bring what I learn there back to you.