Join us in July!
Working groups continue into their second month! All are welcome and your level of participation is up to you: you can join us in July for the first time, stop by once or twice, or participate every month. If you want to help shape our National Campaign as a working group leader, you can apply here; we’ve extended the deadline to accept people on a rolling basis. Sign up for each group's email list at our working group page.
On our July calls, we will continue to get to know each other and think about how we can coordinate our efforts, looking toward Advent 2020 as a time for action and transformation. More about that in next week’s email! We hope that you’ll join us.
Alternatives Working Group - Thursday, July 9, 8 pm ET/7 pm CT/5 pm PT
Lobbying Working Group - Monday, July 13, 8 pm ET/7 pm CT/5 pm PT (CORRECTED LINK: last week’s email linked to the DA group in place of the lobbying group)
Direct Action Working Group - Thursday, July 16, 12 pm ET/11 am CT/9 am PT
Education Working Group - Monday, July 20, 8 pm ET/7 pm CT/5 pm PT
CTA members sing during liturgy at our 2014 conference; innovative and inclusive liturgies are an example of our alternatives strategy in action
We kicked off our National Campaign this June with the first round of monthly strategy calls. Zach Johnson and I are the strategy leaders for the education working group, but even I didn’t know exactly what to expect from our first call. 20 or so people from across the country joined us for that introductory meeting. They talked about their commitment to education from all sorts of angles, from a Montessori teacher to a campus minister. Folks shared their frustration that so many Catholics never hear about what goes on in the Church, from synods to ugly coverups. That first call just turned into a conversation: Why does education matter? What can it do to transform our Church?
Zach and I also had a subject to raise with our group: while we don’t want to devalue education, we do want to decenter it. Why is education the go-to strategy for our movement? Part of it has to do with our historical demographics (and the class dynamics that they may imply): studies have borne out that progressive Catholic activists have a significantly higher rate of graduate degrees than the general population! But education doesn’t inherently disrupt power. Individual transformation through learning has to lead to collective transformation through action. This is why we try to talk about all of the strategies as an ecosystem. We need education, but we need more than education. Scholar Ibram X. Kendi writes that “racist ideas grow out of discriminatory policies, not the other way around.” Writer Jessa Crispin argues, “buying a couple of books from the Women’s History Month display table at Barnes & Noble didn’t solve misogyny.” I’ve just finished seven years in higher education, and as much as I loved my time in college and graduate school, it also made a skeptic out of me! Wealth, power, and alienation from the world in academia can make you rethink your plans.
Talking to the education working group, though, reminded me of education's radical potential, especially in concert with other strategies. What about the Montessori tradition of experiential learning, which can inherently combine education with a strategy like direct action? Take people to a protest and have them reflect on their experience. Or start working the land, building an alternative community, and let your political consciousness develop from that concrete act. Each strategy has its strengths and limitations. That's why we need all of them, together, in creative concert. And this example shows why we need everybody! Even though Zach and I facilitated the group, we learned with the people who co-created that space with us.
I didn’t attend all of the strategy working group calls, but I’ve heard from others about what the other beginnings looked like. On the lobbying call, Bob Shine and John Noble led a conversation about power-mapping: how do we leverage power to make change in an institutional context? Kate McElwee of Women's Ordination Conference and Deb Rose-Milavec of FutureChurch led the direct action call, drawing on their years of organizing creative protests for Church justice. And on the alternatives call, long-time CTA leaders Dora Saavedra and Fred Dabrowski facilitated a conversation about revolutionary and inclusive community.
In the days and weeks since those first calls, the working groups are starting to take shape in other forms. Brendan, a new-to-CTA young adult from New York City, kicked off a round of introductions on the email chain for the education working group. Our members come from everywhere in the country, from California to Illinois to Connecticut to Texas. Some are brand-new to CTA and Church reform; others have worked with us for years.
Our Anti-Racism Team is also working on how CTA can embody our anti-racist commitments through the working groups and campaign. Long-time leaders in this work continue to call us to account, reminding us that many of the strategies for social transformation that we incorporate into the campaign have been formed in the struggles of people of color. We maintain that anti-racist practice must permeate all of our work, and we are striving to co-create a campaign that centers people who have been violently de-centered in Church and society. Stay tuned for more updates about what the reinvigorated Anti-Racism Team is working on!
We hope that you will join us this July for the second round of working group meetings as we continue to craft, create, and re-create our Church!
