Sandhya Rani Jha - Transforming Communities: How People Like You Are Healing Their Neighborhoods

Praise for Transforming Communities

The stories in this book reminded me of songs by Woody Guthrie and art by Marc Chagall: rays of hope lighting up a dark landscape. This is a book to be cherished.

Eboo Patel, author of Interfaith Leadership: A Primer

Sandhyas stated goalwhich she ably achieves hereis simple yet arduous: to get us out of our stifling cynicism so that we may see deeply, listen intently, act justly, and love radically. To break down our world-weariness and its consequent inactivity, she beautifully fuses the enduring wisdom of faith and justice movements with the raw tactility and wounded victories of on-the-ground work, in ways that both disarm and charm. To be sure, her scholarship is needed more than ever, for it is nuanced yet accessible, technical yet gritty, erudite yet disruptive.

Jos Francisco Morales Torres, Director of Pastoral Formation, Disciples Seminary Foundation, Claremont, California

Describing the convicted, creative, courageous initiatives of people in our own communities, Sandhya Jha focuses a narrative beam of light on the moral arc of the universe as it bends toward justice. Thank you, Sandhya, for helping us lift our eyes to see possibility and hopeand a pathway to our own involvement.

Sharon E. Watkins, author of Whole: A Call to Unity in Our Fragmented World

I can be overwhelmed by the call to live transformative love in the worldto house the homeless, restore souls, repair relationships, generate justice. So I am very grateful for Sandhya Rani Jhas book. She doesnt deal in empty aspirations. Instead, she describes community-change models that are actually working. Jha not only knows what I hope for, she shows me how to get there. I need this good news. I think we all do.

Andrew Dreitcer, Center for Engaged Compassion at Claremont School of Theology

Jha pulls no punches in this enlivening report from the front lines of social justice activism and our common life together: Protests arent enough. And experts cant fix communities from the outside. If youre looking for hope amidst the turmoil of our times alongside practical strategies to enhance your own work, read each chapter and take notes in the margins. From innovative prison programs and new church models like Gordon Cosbys Church of the Saviour, youll find inspiration.

Rob Wilson-Black, Chief Executive Officer, Sojourners

In this practical and inspiring guide, Sandhya Jha teaches us how to lean on the arc of the moral universe so that it bends towards justice. In our exhaustion and desperation, Jha infuses hope into every page.

Carol Howard Merritt, pastor and author of Healing Spiritual Wounds

My South African friend Episcopal priest Rene August, says that the difference between a marathon and a sprint is how you breathe. Many of us are finding ourselves in a marathon at this historic moment and we need books that make us take a deep breath. Transforming Communities is such a book; it draws our attention to the good news happening in communities around us in a way that strengthens our faithwhile providing us with practical advice designed to encourage and equip.

Alexia Salvatierra, coauthor of Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World

Sandhya Rani Jha has provided a timely resource for community leaders to get a handle on how to live and lead faithfully in an increasingly polarized world savaged and torn apart by racism, sexism, xenophobia, economic disparity, and political isolation. She surveyed our recent history and mined from it gems of community transformation led by the local people for the local people. She did not glamorize these stories but shared them holistically with their successes and struggles that came with challenging the status quo. Along the way, she showed how relational and truth-telling tools such as asset-based community development, restorative justice, World Caf, and truth commission are essential for transforming communities in our context today. The Learn More section of each chapter is invaluable for further learning and connecting with these tools and resources beyond this book. I know I will refer to this book again and again in my ministry of empowering church leaders to create sustainable communities.

Eric H. F. Law, Executive Director, Kaleidoscope Institute, and author of several books including Holy Currencies

In our transitional, diasporic age, the possibility of true community seems lost in the face of daunting rates of isolation, addiction, and structural violence. Yet Sandhya Jha dares each of us to imagine ourselves as grassroots organizers wholly prepared to challenge and calm the tempest of political winds now blowing nationwide. Complementing an intersectional diagnosis of our manifold social ills with practical examples of effective, justice-centered change, Jha offers an inspiring reminder that we hold immense power to make our communities right again.

Ethan Vesely-Flad, Director of National Organizing, Fellowship of Reconciliation

Copyright

Copyright 2017 by Sandhya Rani Jha.

All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, www.copyright.com .

Photo of Sandhya Rani Jha by Brooke Anderson

Cover Illustration: Natalie Turri

Cover Design: Jesse Turri

www.ChalicePress.com

Print: 9780827237155 EPUB:9780827237162 EPDF: 9780827237179

Contents

Dedication

In the spring of 2014, I met with a colleague as I was finishing up my manuscript for my last book on race and faith in America. He asked how I was doing.

I wonder if Im suffering from depression, I said.

Well, youve been living in the narrative of systemic racism nonstop for the past 6 months, he responded. Im not shocked to hear that.

That summer I started a little podcast called Hope from the Hood, telling stories of the good things the small nonprofits I work with are doing. In fact, I was editing my first episode when the idea for this book emerged, and they were both part of the same reality that finally dawned on me:

I cant keep living in the morass of how this nation is failing,
I thought . I need to ground myself in stories of hope. I need to delve into the possibilities for a better world if Im going to help build it.

This book is dedicated to the people I get to work with on a daily basis at the Oakland Peace Center who remind me not to give up hope. Its dedicated to the people who are actually building what Dr. King called Beloved Community brick by brick, garden row by garden row, inmate by inmate, and registered voter by registered voter. We do not look up from our work often enough to realize how much weve done.

Look up. People are paying attention. Youre making the world people want to live in. Thank you.

Introduction

You cant have a cooperative without cooperators.

Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta

The village of Mondragn was excited to meet its new priest. Until he stepped into the pulpit.

He spoke in a monotone with intricate and repetitive phraseology difficult to understand. Away with this priest that the Monsignor has imposed upon us, he hardly even reads with any grace! That was the first reaction of the faithful, complained one parishioner. He had really wanted to study sociology in Belgium, and it showed; people found him hard to follow in small group settings as well as during his homilies. They even tried to get that red priest (as conservatives in town called him) reassigned, to no avail.