The Second Year Corps Member Initiative: Why I Chose to Stay
New Orleans as a city seems to be healing. Potholes in our streets are slowly being filled, blighted houses slated for demolition are disappearing, and schools are re-opening. We are winning lawsuits that protect our citizens’ rights while recovery agencies are rehabilitating parks and playgrounds overrun by drugs. And yet the people of New Orleans are broken.
As a housing specialist at UNITY New Orleans, Becca Waxman works directly with homeless clients to help them find permanent housing. Photo by Mario Tama, Getty Images, http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/homeless_box.htm
Struggling with this single issue has driven my desire to maintain an active role in the nonprofit sector, a group of institutions reminding the masses that there are people sleeping on those mended streets, living in and furnishing the 65,000 abandoned buildings and overrunning our children’s playgrounds. My Avodah placement last year, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, asks the public to consider the lives of the disenfranchised: people of color, women, those raising a family and living with a disability. Then they ask, “Why are people poor?” I wonder, because of the deteriorating streets, the abandoned homes or the failing schools? Because society identifies them as an underprivileged minority? They pose this uncomfortable question and it makes us ponder whether people want to be poor, and to what degree it is their choice. Our streets and schools are undoubtedly in need of repair, but how does a city where every single citizen at one point in time was displaced from their home ignore its most vulnerable and growing demographic: those who spend their nights in places no human deserves to sleep? These are questions I deal with on a daily basis in my current position with UNITY of Greater New Orleans.
Two years ago I didn’t think about these questions. I had not yet developed a vocabulary centered around affordable housing, youth organizers, protected citizens, and public defenders. Two years ago I unknowingly built relationships with others based on similar religious and class backgrounds. Up until then it was simple. I made friends by spending time with people who I enjoyed and who enjoyed similar activities. Today I know the effectiveness of the nonprofit sector, and I am able to spend my days and nights with this most vulnerable population because last year, what stemmed from this evolving analysis of oppression was a group of strong friends.
We were new, to each other and to the city. We allowed ourselves to experience anger, often as a result of our privilege and the effects our whiteness has on society. We studied and celebrated the teachings and victories that quickly led us to create a kehillah kedoshah, a holy community. In a time and place where individualism and self fulfillment prevails over communal strength and vision, we took this despair and flipped it into a mission that drove our community. Rabbi Dov Gartenberg teaches that “a community becomes holy when it is engaged in the mitzvah of supporting each individual who is part of it during times of need and times of joy.” Anyone who walked into our home on Jefferson Avenue recognized this spirit of intentionality, and when I realized that a day would soon come when I would no longer share meals with my holy community, I decided that I wasn’t willing to remain engaged in Avodah solely as an alum.
One evening we collectively crafted a plan to continue our involvement as “second year” corps members. Personally, I needed to make sure that I could sustain my membership in my community as a housing and human rights activist while strengthening my identity as a progressive Jew. This drove me to join what would develop into a year-long conversation analyzing the Avodah experience.
Becca Waxman (right) takes time to reflect on her decision to spend a second year working for social justice in New Orleans.
We saw where we could improve the program, and spelled out exactly how we would fit into the equation of creating a more powerful year for the second group of corps members to come through New Orleans. Today we are finding ways to formally and casually engage in conversations on gender, spirituality, race and activism by leading programs with the new corps members. Jews4neworleans.org has become a forum regularly updated by corps members reflecting and further examining their roles in their jobs and the Jewish community, while weaving themselves into the culture and history of the city’s private and public sectors. We meet and work together on a regular basis because of a true kinship we learned as we came into our own during our Avodah year. If you can imagine it, we envision an even brighter future for Avodah, and we are eagerly executing our ideas and watching Avodah grow to new heights. We are not the corps members; rather, we are the supports and visionaries.
As an alum and as a “second year” corps member, I am expanding our holy community of nine into a kehilah kedoshah of more minds and more belief systems conquering the big questions like “Why are people homeless?” I don’t run on empty and I won’t burn out as I struggle with this fight to end homelessness because of this community that allows me to strengthen my identity and understand where my strength comes from.
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Sandra Greenberg said:
I had the privilege of meeting these young people and was so impressed with their dedication and enthusiasm in pursuing their goals. Their integrity gives one hope for the future of our society. If only our government officials, local, state, and national, were of the caliber of this exceptional Avodah group.