Dear friends and neighbors,
In a ‘stay-home’ season where days, weeks, and months run together…it’s been a while. For our Coalition—as I imagine for many of you—these months have often felt like deep water: still on the surface, unrelenting currents beneath, more difficult to navigate than they seem. But time and again, two intersecting truths rise to that strange, still surface. In a pandemic where my breath can threaten your very breath, surely all of us beloved humans are deeply, intimately connected. And just as surely, we have accepted rank, structural inequality as the everyday shape of our life together.
Our Coalition has spent decades seeking faithful ways into the gap between these realities, inviting divided neighbors to embody boundless belonging amidst the worst we do to each other. From that perspective, there are far too many apparent, awful patterns in the way Covid-19 intersects our community. With virus as with violence, threats to every body are landing inequitably on black and brown bodies. The costs of imposed social distance—be it for public health or public safety—remain highest for our neighbors whose choices are few. Everywhere we look new pain is layered onto our oldest communal scars. And still yet, to trace that hurt is to grieve and glimpse the unlikely promise of who we are —who we still might be—together.
The paths into that raw, hopeful region labeled ‘all of us’ have never been easier to find, or more difficult to travel. But in tenuous days ahead, this simple invitation is the best we have to offer Durham’s people of faith and goodwill. As urgency and scarcity crowd in upon every good work, let us practice humility and generosity with one another. With a keen new sense of how fragile bodies can be, let us search out creative new ways for our bodies and values to meet. In every frail and powerful means available, let us fiercely tend the space between us.
While we remain at some distance from each other, we’ll be using this medium to share inspiration from Durham neighbors joined in that nurturing work. But for right-now, I leave you with ready opportunities to invest in, envision, and witness to a community framed by our boundless belonging.
Yours in persistent hope,
Ben Haas
(Director, RCND)
5/2020
Invest
This season is rich with vital opportunities to direct our measurable toward the immeasurable. RCND has co-organized a Bull City Stimulus Redistribution Collective to help neighbors turn stimulus in the direction of solidarity. Other friends have launched a Thriving Community Fund to support PoC-owned businesses. And the Coalition remains committed to meeting tangible needs among the folks we’re in relationship with.
Envision
Perhaps ‘studying war no more’ could begin by studying strategic nonviolence much more. It is past high time to reckon with the deep need and profound case for reparations. As well as a criminal legal system that readily overlooks ‘victims’ and often strains to protect ‘offenders’ from itself. And to renew our understanding of how these realities intertwine in our beloved Durham.
Witness
One month from today (June 20), join the Poor People’s Campaign in a digital justice gathering: the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington. And closer to home, join RCND in an ongoing commitment to One Life Witness.