Daily Archives: December 18, 2019

With some cohousing, co-living inhabitants share chores and a kitchen; for others they live more independently and share expenses. Photo: Courtesy Red Oak Realty

Home Truths, a quarterly report on the state of the Berkeley real estate market, is brought to you byRed Oak Realty.

Most of us in the East Bay live exclusively with our nuclear families, but not all.

Some East Bay residents choose to live in intentional communities that transcend the traditional nuclear family makeup of home exclusively with partners, parents or children.

The East Bays grand Victorians (and other homes of course) have always hosted communities of roommates, some more organized than others. In this post, we highlight the latter shared housing that formalizes the living relationship between unrelated members to a greater degree.

While most East Bay real estate consumers live more traditionally, some East Bay residents (and some of our clients) choose to live in intentional communities.

These different living situations vary from independent, personal arrangements between just two people or families to those at higher scales with a framework provided by a corporation or person to organize living for many families in one place. While not always the case, living in intentional communities can be a more affordable way to live in the East Bay.

Collaboration lives at the heart of these arrangements, which, of course, can vary greatly. In some cases, co-living inhabitants share chores and kitchen space, in others they live more independently and share expenses for upkeep of shared property and expenses.

Intentional communities come in two flavors: cohousing, where individual homes are clustered together in a tight-knit community with more privacy, and co-living, where between 12 to 30 people can share a large house, including all common areas. Co-housing communities tend to offer more permanent living situations than co-living, which can have higher turnover rates.

Residents find these communities in a variety of ways, including by visiting Cohousing California or by participating in the East Bay Cohousing Meetup group, which covers student coops, collective and co-living households, urban and rural eco-villages, faith-based or service-oriented, moshads, Kibbutzes and income-sharing communes.

Typically, co-housing developments have between 15 and 40 homes.

Below, are just a few East Bay co-housing communities.

Located three blocks from the Bay Trail, The Ranch at Dogtown in West Oaklands Dogtown neighborhood features a variety of nine buildings, from houses and apartments to cottages and lofts.

On 8,000 square feet of reclaimed land and surrounded by a tall gate, the community, established in 1990, features a central garden, a chicken coop and bees. The community has approximately 30 members who share the communal garden and taking care of the land.

Diversity, in all senses of the word, plays a big role in what makes the East Bay so great. The areas diverse geography, races, cultures, mindsets and living situations make us all richer. Stay tuned for future celebrations of our home markets diversity.

Established in 1994, Berkeley Cohousing has 15 units (cottages and duplexes) in 10 buildings on a former farm in West Berkeley. The 0.8-acre community has an arrangement with the city that keeps price appreciation of the communitys homes under market value; they currently go for approximately 50% below market rate, but buyers have to meet certain low-income requirements and pass a community interview.

The community has approximately 34 adult and nine child members, and, like many cohousing communities, features a common house where joint meals and gatherings take place.

Members in each housing unit pay between $300 and $400 each month in community dues, which covers the cost of group meals (which occur from two to five times each week) and other upkeep needs; members participate in cleaning and cooking duties. Members make decisions based on consensus, which can be supplemented by a vote if necessary.

Founded in 1999 when a community of five families bought three adjacent duplexes, Temescal Creek Cohousing, in Oaklands popular Temescal neighborhood, has 11 units on 0.75 acres with approximately 20 adult members.

The community calls itself a cohousing retrofit, as the founders took traditional homes and converted them into their intentional community. The community shares between two and five meals each week and makes decisions by consensus with a fall-back option of winning an 80% majority.

The community also has a common house, which the community members financed by taking out individual home equity lines of credit.

Home Truthsis written and sponsored byRed Oak Realty, the largest independent real estate broker in the East Bay, serving the community since 1976. Readmore in this series. If you are interested in learning more about the local real estate market orare considering buying or selling a home, contact Red Oak athello@redoakrealty.com, 510-250 8780.

Read more from the original source:

Home Truths: Co-housing in the East Bay offers an alternative to traditional living - Berkeleyside

(Courtesy Kate Marquez)

This is the latest installment of the interview seriesMeet the Art Community of the US Southwest. Check out our past interviewshere.

Kate Marquez has worked in the nonprofit and government sectors for the entirety of her professional career, working alongside local and national nonprofit organizations to help advance their independent fundraising capabilities and to secure financial and developmental sustainability. A Tucson native, Kate attended the University of Arizona with a focus on Political Science and Religious Studies.

In July of 2006, Kate accepted a position as the first full-time Development Director for the Greater Oro Valley Arts Council and would later transform the organization into the arts and cultural organization, the Southern Arizona Arts and Cultural Alliance (SAACA). SAACA has since grown to become one of the largest multi-disciplinary arts organizations in the region, dedicated to the creation, preservation, and advancement of the arts. Each year SAACA provides thousands of opportunities for artists in the community to present and exhibit their work through culinary, arts, and music events and festivals as well as groundbreaking arts and healthcare integrated programming and education outreach.

Kate founded the Statewide Arizona Business Committee for the Arts which establishes groundbreaking arts and business integration programs through the enhancement of business practices, strengthening our economy, increasing employee engagement, and improving creative thinking skills through creative approaches. Kate is the 2017 winner of the Inside Tucson Business Nonprofit CEO of the year, and two-time nominee for the Arizona Governors Arts Awards, and currently serves on the Americans for the Arts Private Sector Advisory Council. In 2019, Kate founded a new 14,000 square foot center for arts and culture in Southern Arizona, CATALYST Collaborative Arts & Maker Space, which includes a teaching kitchen, robotics and engineering lab, arts and crafts studio, and music and digital arts production studio.

***

Where were you born?

I was born in Dallas, Texas, but moved to Tucson at only 3 months old, and have lived here ever since.

Whats your first strong art memory?

I come from a particularly musical family. My mother was a professional vocalist, signed with Capitol Records at only 17 years old. She met my father who ran stage crew for her touring band. My first art memories were of my mother and father singing together she sang most every day. A formative memory in my childhood was when my grandmother took me at six years old to see CATS when it was touring through Arizona. She bought me a brand new dress, and rented a limo to take my cousins and siblings all together. I remember being enthralled with the entire production of it all. I was lucky enough to attend a Montessori-type arts focused school from kindergarten through sixth grade, where we took every test to classical music, and arts classes were a daily occurrence field trips were to the opera and museums, and our extracurricular activities were the school musical production, literary arts, and participating in cooking and creative projects. It was a unique way to learn, and it instilled in each of us the power of creativity at a very young age.

What was your favorite exhibition you saw this year?

My grandmother, who I was very close to, passed away this summer. Although this year I was given the opportunity to visit Barcelona, Madrid, Nashville, and Minneapolis, and in each place had extraordinarily moving arts experiences, by far my favorite was getting to take my grandmother to see CATS when it toured here in Arizona once again this past March. It is a timeless play that now holds a very special place in my heart, and of all of the moving experiences I have had in the arts, this one will never leave me.

What are you currently working on?

Our organization just recently opened a new 14,000 square-foot first-of-its kind arts and make space. It has been a dreamed fulfilled, to bring such a unique space here to our community. We envisioned a place where we could put all the creativity which thrives in our community under one roof. A place to celebrate together. A space where intentional ideas and collaborations thrive. A project that would continue to reshape our community through building a stronger sense of place through the arts, while advocating for artists and organizations to grow. We named the project CATALYST, which demonstrates our ambitious goals. We hope to build something that will become a regenerative space for arts and culture, experience and creativity. We opened the space on December 3, 2019, in the center of a large shopping center, and are collaborating with over 100 artists and nonprofit organizations on the project. 2020 will be an exciting year for our organization as we strive to make deep impact through creative collaborations in CATALYST. The space is very unique and it is intentional that we have invested in a teaching kitchen alongside a robotics and engineering lab, and an arts and crafts studio alongside a music and digital arts space. Each of these spaces provides opportunity for learning and teaching, sharing and collaboration, and opportunities to gather unite around what connects us. For our youth, this will be a place where workforce development programs connect creativity and innovation. For artists, CATALYST will be a space to showcase, share, and expand their work.

What guides your process?

The process which I personally attach to is the concept that we learn by doing. Taking risks, making mistakes, and doing it hand in hand with others is how we learn our shared value for our community.

Whats the best book youve read recently?

I must admit that I am really a hard sell on keeping attention towards a full book I am more of a film buff than anything else. I tend to read a lot online, and still value news from a printed newspaper. Over the past 10 years, if I have invested in a book, it has typically been a read focused on leadership. It is always something I am trying to improve upon in myself, and am fascinated by some of the worlds best change leaders. I am particularly smitten with Simon Sinek, and have collected each and every one of his books. He is a passionate speaker and leader, and has an amazing way of attaching lessons to real life experiences that really seem to hit home for me personally.

Do you prefer to see art alone or with friends?

I am a strong believer that art is all around us. Gone are the days of people expecting to only see and experience art in a museum or a theatre it exists in the murals and graffiti that surround us, to the public art and preservation of buildings, street buskers and street art from corner to corner. Accessibility to art is so different today than in the past. From the moment we wake up, our life is engrossed with creativity, color, and music. From the house we wake up in designed by an architect, to the art on our walls, or the car we drive, the television and movies we watch, to the music we play on our commute to work or throughout the day, to each and every thing we make with our hands, the creative process surrounds. My favorite thing to share is food there is no greater cultural unifier than the culinary arts. From the recipes we pass on from generation to generation, to the daily ritual of creating and sharing a meal together, food is how we connect.

Do you like to photograph the art you see?

I always snap a photo of something that moves me. I am particularly drawn to outdoor art and color.

What do you see as the centers for creative community in Arizona?

Southern Arizona is rich in the arts. It is a more challenging community to make it as a professional artist, because of the economic conditions of our region, but that is no way a sign of the creativity that exists within. We are a community made of up thousands of photographers, musicians, jewelers, muralists, writers, singers, chefs, tinkerers, designers, fabricators, and makers. About 90% of them work full time. Arizona ranks at the bottom of local and state funding for the arts, and our long term goal is to create more opportunities for all of these creatives to connect, in an effort to bring a more modern approach to how we define arts and culture in our community, and to create more opportunities to bring awareness and advocacy to the power of the arts in communities, and how they fund and support it long term.

Original post:

Meet the Art Community of the US Southwest: Kate Marquez Wants Tucson to Be a Place For Collaboration - Hyperallergic

I became discouraged, as I was on track to earn a Ph.D and go far in my career, Drane recalled about not completing her masters.

But she had not hit bottom. Not until she applied to be an Uber driver but was denied due to being a felon that same year.

Yet, despite the setback, Drane decided to create a new career path for herself. In 2014, the Englewood native, decided to create her own opportunity and founded the Englewood Walk & Run 5K: Ditch the Weight & Guns. At the time of the first 5K race, 4,000 people participated, including former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. Drane says, Working out and working within the community was my therapy. I was still using my criminal justice background to empower Englewood to ditch the weight and guns.

Seven years later, another opportunity for a new career path came serendipitously.

After attending National Expungement Week Chicago this past September, hosted by Element 7 and the National Diversity and Inclusion Cannabis Alliance (NDICA), Drane welcomed investors to her community for a tour, which included a potential cultivation center. After the tour, the investors made an offer for Drane to become a social equity partner.

Drane explains, Now, we are partners, and I own 51 percent of the company. I wouldnt have been able to do this without investor partners because the cost to open a dispensary is too expensive.

Barriers to entry into the cannabis industry are multi-faceted, according to Drane. For starters, the cannabis dispensary application is difficult for some people to understand who need support.

The State of Illinois should have done a better job of community outreach, letting the public know where to apply, get help, and financing, Drane comments.

The cannabis dispensary application fee alone is $5,000.

During the December Town Hall Meeting on Adult Use Cannabis Law, in Chicagos Austin neighborhood, State Sen. Heather Steans (D-7th) was asked, How are cannabis dispensary applicants from low-income Black neighborhoods supposed to afford the $5,000 application fee? Steans suggested options including application sliding scale rate, applying as social equity applicant, and Cannabis Business Development Fund.

Dranes story seems like a one in a million, and for many Black Americans who will never experience a full circle moment, that reality appears to be intentional based on the policies created during the War on Drugs.

Its a slap in the face when white communities are profiting from cannabis and people of color have felonies, Drane declared. Black dispensaries, Black cultivation centers, and Black Cannabis Transportation create generational wealth. And we are more likely to give back to our community than White counterparts. My plan is to create jobs for the community.

Although the War on Drugs first impacted Black America many decades ago, its echoes can still be felt today.

In 1971, former President Richard Nixon announced a War on Drugs political campaign. Recently, though, Nixons Domestic Chief Policy, John Ehrilchman, confessed that it was never about the drugs.

During a 2016 interview, Ehrilchman confessed, "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies [and Blacks] with marijuana and Blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Read this article:

New cannabis legislation is a start to restoring Black America after the War on Drugs - The Real Chi

By Heather Faulkner and Lee Stickells

Updated December 16, 2019 17:53:20

It's just after sunset and someone has blown the conch shell to summon residents to the weekly Sunday community dinner.

Painted by moonlight, silhouetted figures begin to appear in the door frames of houses and strolling up the gravel road.

Soon we're sharing a meal vegetarian with around 20 others in a large, hand-built, hexagonal building that serves as the community centre.

Later, as dishes are dutifully washed and dried, a guitar and mandolin are picked up and folk songs begin to reverberate around the room.

Voices break into familiar harmonies as the words of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell resonate around the hall.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was a scene from the 1970s, save for the lyrics being read from a smart phone screen held by Michael Pawson, whose son and grandchildren are joining in the sing-along.

How the world has changed.

This is Bodhi Farm, an intentional community in northern NSW. And if it seems straight out of the '70s, that's because it is.

The community started in 1977 with aspirations to share land in what long-term resident and community archivist Gai Longmuir terms "voluntary simplicity" a "thoughtful and reflective way to live collectively" in harmony with the natural environment.

It was also founded on an adoption of the five Buddhist precepts: do no harm, do not steal, do not lie, do not misuse sex and do not consume alcohol or drugs.

The residents sometimes joke that they were "farmers of enlightenment".

Communities like this were once dismissively labelled as "hippy communes", yet we are currently facing twin challenges of environmental destruction and unaffordable housing.

Could these surviving countercultural communities hold important lessons?

Bodhi Farm is not typical of Australia's '70s countercultural communities in its longevity (or its spiritual foundations).

But neither is it the only one to flourish and endure.

While utopian '70s communities were widely regarded as failures, they've gone on to inform and influence the design of modern eco-villages, the tiny house movement, urban intentional communities and myriad minor movements in between.

Now, in 2019, Bodhi Farm residents have a handsome communal building where meals and meetings are regularly hosted.

Decisions are made through a communal consensus process. The community produces its own power via a solar and micro-hydro system and is proudly off the grid. It has its own spring-fed water supply.

The houses have been mostly hand-built with recycled materials, usually over a long period of time, and are set in a beautiful regenerated forest.

And they tend to have cost hundreds, rather than hundreds of thousands, to build.

Multiple generations live together, and the kids have free run of a beautiful rainforest "backyard".

At first glance, Bodhi Farm's lifestyle seems idyllic.

Its effort to escape from the housing market seems especially attractive with the OECD's dwelling-price-to-income ratio index for Australia recording a 78 per cent increase between 1980 and 2015.

Many Australians who feel squeezed out of the current housing market are looking to cooperative models as a way of obtaining affordable housing.

There is great interest in simpler, low-impact lifestyles as seen in the tiny house phenomenon, though it is fraught with red tape.

The environmental costs of conventional urban housing construction are also becoming clearer.

And contemporary eco-villages can sometimes be no less expensive than their urban counterparts.

So, Bodhi Farm's eco-village-type qualities have a lot of appeal.

But it was hard work for the community to get to this position. For one, what the young dreamers at Bodhi were doing in 1977 was not quite legal.

Neighbouring Tuntable Falls intentional community residents recall that their application for multiple occupancy (or MO, as it is colloquially termed) hinged on a working toilet.

Their innovative installation of a composting toilet swayed a weary government inspector in their favour.

The land itself was, as Gai describes it, "ravaged". It was logged and had at some point been used to grow bananas.

Where rainforest now stands, was once a barren hill, full of "bladey grass".

"It was very marginal land," says Gai. "It was cheap."

While experiments in communal living blossomed in 1970s Australia, they were by no means mainstream.

Often dismissed as drop-out hippies, communities like Bodhi Farm found their desires to live a different kind of life were not always understood or tolerated by locals.

"Have they told you about the baby stealing," quipped one Bodhi original resident, referring to one of the many rumours that were circulated about the community.

Many locals thought their new and sometimes-naked neighbours were dirty and uneducated. It was far from the truth.

University educated and widely travelled, they may not have been trained architects or gardeners, but they brought with them philosophies of community many had returned from experiences in India that were foreign to rural Australians, and they were determined for their buildings to enable the kind of society they wanted to create.

"When I first went travelling as a 21 year-old," says Gai, "I vividly remember flying over what was then Portuguese Timor and looking down at what would have been the approaches to Dili."

The simple thatched houses amidst the bougainvillaea, replete with children running among the structures, resonated with her. "I had a visceral sense of it being a pattern I really liked the pattern of village and community," she says.

"I had done a long Buddhist meditation retreat, and that made me look for a spiritual community not just an ordinary lefty [community]", adds Michael, who joined Bodhi Farm in 1978 and is the current resident caretaker of the community garden (and a doting grandfather).

With no electricity and no real houses, the community started out in tents, trailers, a converted bus, and then built more-robust dwellings when amenities and supplies were available hence the recycled materials.

Michael's own home resembles a castle.

"I wanted to have an interesting house because I wanted to have an interesting life," says Michael.

What started out as a lean-to in 1978 ("We just put up four poles on a floor and a roof and didn't really have walls," he says) was added on when children began arriving.

But when a large tree branch took out a corner of the house during roofing repairs, Michael spotted water damage.

"Timber's too tasty to termites," he says. And so, he decided to build out of cement.

Based on a design he sketched out, the building began to take shape.

"Brick by brick, barrow by barrow," was the way to go, says Michael, who built the house himself as he could afford materials.

"I didn't really have plans," he admits, "I just sort of launched into it and problem-solved as I went along."

Building stopped when Michael suffered a ruptured aneurysm. By that time, the place needed lifting and restumping a task Michael was no longer able to do himself.

But ingenuity seems to be Michael's forte; he simply excavated underneath the structure and restumped it that way.

"I didn't quite finish it," says Michael of the house. Though he hopes to get back to it in the future, he is realistic about it: "The arthritis is kicking in now".

The threat of building inspections weighed heavily on residents' minds. Not much was built to code in the early days and they relied on the goodwill of council inspectors to continue.

Most of the early residents didn't have jobs. They pooled their money to buy materials for the community.

Cars were shared and maintained by a self-taught mechanic.

"We were quite young," says Gai of the sparseness of Bodhi's early days.

"I think we were very undemanding of what life might serve us, and grateful for what we got."

It's a sentiment that, with 21st century hindsight, "almost makes me want to cry", she says.

Then came the children. The challenges of a growing community were exhausting.

Though the socio-economic conditions at the time made it possible to establish the settlements through allowing some residents to remain on the dole raising families was incredibly difficult.

A commitment to extended forms of kinship often helped.

The adage that "it takes a village to raise a child" was almost literally applied as kids roamed the community, looked after by whichever adult was present.

People also began to go outside to find work to support their growing families, and facilities such as electricity and water.

Relationships were strained, but the community endured.

Gai treasures that sense of community.

"In our increasingly fragmented society, the bonding and continuity that we have been able to create for ourselves, the sense of place and mutual protection, is, for me, like a deep anchor to life," she says.

The challenges facing Bodhi Farm today are a far cry from those faced in '77.

They have safe, comfortable homes ("Don't forget to unlock the door on your way out" is the motto here).

And they even have wi-fi (how else to share the lyrics for a song written nearly 50 years ago?).

Bush trails have been tamed into level roads. It is quaint, it is comfortable and yet, its future is uncertain.

The original founders those who have stayed on are ageing. This is no Shangri-La.

At the monthly community meeting we attended, attracting new people was a top item on their talking board.

The cost to join the community is well-below current market trends, though repairs and maintenance will be expected to be footed by new community members.

But it's not an easy entry into the community. There is a two-year trying-out period to settle into Bodhi Farm.

They are careful about who they welcome as a permanent resident. Someone will be needed to maintain the electricity grid, powered by the sun and creek flows.

The system still needs maintenance, and a brilliant mind to upgrade its performance as technologies change.

Climate change is on their minds as well. Shifting weather patterns are making the once-abundant creek-water supply more tenuous. No rain means no water.

There are other challenges, such as ongoing needs for carpentry, mechanics and child care that the community must solve together.

But they know from more than 40 years of living experience at Bodhi Farm, that change is inevitable, but not new. They will adapt.

Multimedia documentary storyteller Heather Faulkner (Griffith University) and architectural historian Lee Stickells (University of Sydney) are researching the origin stories of 1970s Australian intentional communities. The Way Out Down Under project can be followed on Instagram: @_wayoutdownunder_

Topics:community-and-society,lifestyle,house-and-home,housing,nsw,australia

First posted December 15, 2019 05:00:43

The rest is here:

Bodhi Farm and other countercultural communities live like the 1970s never ended - ABC News

Its nearly lunchtime in the west Michigan city of Kalamazoo. Auntie Saheeda Perveen Nadeem, 64, stands over the stove in the kitchen at First Congregational United Church of Christ (FCUCC) preparing a nutritious lunch for 20 children living in poverty.

During the more than a year and a half in which she has been sequestered inside the church as a migrant receiving sanctuary protection, Nadeem often cooks for large groups, provides child care, and connects with church leadership. As a Muslim, she practices her faith by serving others through food, even as she fasts during Ramadan. As a migrant, she is a surrogate mother to more than a dozen others who have arrived in the United States fleeing violence.

Nadeem fits the trope of the model immigrant: She has always paid her taxes and never committed a crime (not even a parking violation). She is deeply committed to her local community, and they in turn are committed to her.

It came as no surprise when church leaders began to accompany her to appointments with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. ICE in Michigan had been fairly balanced, notes the Rev. Nathan Dannison, senior pastor of FCUCC. When a new director took over, however, they rolled out a policy with zero stays of removal, the temporary postponement that allows migrants like Nadeem to remain in the United States despite lack of documentation.

As valued members of their communities are targeted by ICE for arrest, detention, and deportation, Christians confront a profound conflict between the inhumane policies of the Trump administration and the call to love the immigrant. Those targeted for arrest and removal are not, after all, hardened criminals with violent records. They are elders, those living with chronic illness, visionary dreamers, families facing domestic violence, parents who care for disabled children, and even clergy.

Forced from her birthplace in Pakistan by poverty, Nadeem worked briefly as a maid in Kuwait, sending earnings back to her family. Shortly after having her own children she made the difficult decision to relocate to the United States to provide them with a better life. Unbeknownst to her (as the matter was handled by her then husband), she overstayed her visa. With very few exceptions, the path to legal citizenship closes permanently if a migrant is ever found to be residing in the United States illegally. Such was the case for Nadeem, who worked under the table for less than minimum wage while still paying taxes.

Nadeem was taken into sanctuary after an ICE official said she would be denied a stay and deported. Not only does she face threats by her ex-husband and his tribal community back in Pakistan should she return, Dannison reports that health challenges place her at risk, possibly death, should she undergo a lengthy detention.

When Dannison first heard the news of Nadeems possible deportation from the mocking voice of an ICE official, he says, It was, to me, as if someone had burned a flag. I thought certain things were inalienable, such as the God-given rights outlined in the Constitution, which apply to all human beings living in the United States, regardless of citizenship. Thats no longer the case.

The facilities that currently house those awaiting deportation are privately owned, for-profit companies, so we are battling a wealthy beast here, he says.

As Christians await the holy celebration of the Christ childs birth, the tumult of ICE raids, palpable fear within immigrant communities, and lonely isolation of those living in sanctuary threaten to trouble the insular joy of the season.

The Holy Familys flight to Egypt provokes the question: Do American Christians truly see Jesus in the least of these? In communities across the country, people of faith are awakening to the urgency of this moment and standing alongside the immigrant fashioned in the image of Christ.

Like Nadeem, Mohamed Soumah, another migrant living in sanctuary at a Quaker church and home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, also finds his situation complicated by illness. Sick with kidney disease, Soumah requires dialysis three times weekly. As an undocumented immigrant, he is ineligible for organ donation.

Its possible he could die in sanctuary, concedes the Rev. Deborah Dean-Ware, whose UCC congregation helps support Soumah. According to her Guinea will not accept Soumah back, and his return would be a death sentence due to inadequate health care. (His mother died of kidney disease shortly after returning to Guinea and receiving dialysis there.)

Dean-Ware coordinates the interfaith group of clergy who transport Soumah to every dialysis appointment, waiting as the four-hour procedure ticks toward completion. Each clergy person who transports him wears a tab-collared shirt or stole as a symbol of sanctuary. Dozens of other volunteers offer services to Soumah, such as providing therapy, drawing up his tax forms, and coordinating the monitors who mind the door of the Quaker buildings that house him.

Its very boring, house arrest, says Dean-Ware. We got him an exercise bike. Hell walk laps around the sanctuary. The stress is real and difficult to manage. Hes lost a lot of weight.

Under the presidency of Donald Trump, immigrant neighbors live in fear as loved ones disappear in communities across the country. In the April 2018 ICE raid of Buncombe and Henderson counties in North Carolina, about 15 immigrants were arrested and detained as part of a statewide raid that netted more than 40 arrests.

Community organizer Bruno Hinojosa remembers the call to the immigrant hotline at 6:30 in the morning. A suspicious car was seen picking up two known community members. Could Hinojosas organization, Compaeros Inmigrantes de las Montaas en Accin (CIMA), verify whether ICE was in town carrying out raids?

Prior to 2018 most raids took place in restaurants or manufacturing plants employing undocumented immigrants. This time, Hinojosa says, ICE was everywhereat your home, out in the community. Because CIMA had spent years cultivating best practices and guidelines for interacting with ICE, it trained local activists in the verification process. Those individuals were deployed to Hendersonville shortly after the sun rose in search of ICE vehicles.

Fresh calls continued to roll in, and once CIMA was able to verify the presence of ICE in the area, the organization blasted a warning to the immigrant community through social media along with know-your-rights information.

As families began to hunker down in their homes, CIMA reached out to the sanctuary network of churches, requesting emergency food assistance and other supplies be dropped off at BeLoved Asheville, an intentional community, and Land of the Sky United Church of Christ.

BeLoved Asheville delivered those supplies to neighborhoods specified by CIMA and Nuestro Centro, the local Latino community center. Meanwhile, families whose loved one was arrested were welcomed at Nuestro Centro, where a healing corner, resources, and compassionate hospitality awaited them.

Two days later, as raids continued, CIMA organized a press conference and met personally with members of the city council and the county commissioners, who were taken aback to see ICE launch such comprehensive raids in their community.

We were criminalized and persecuted, dehumanized by seeing ICE officers running their cars in our community streets, up and down, with people not able to go out to pick up their children or groceries, says Dulce Mirian Porras Rosas, director of Nuestro Centro. For four nights in a row we were terrorized, day and night. We didnt know what would happen overnight, she adds, if you would see your family, neighbors, or children again.

As the raids were winding down, ICE officials held a picnic to celebrate their success. Immigrants and their allies showed up with a marching band to chant and sing, disrupting the festivities. It was important to feel that community strength and courage, Hinojosa says of the action that eventually shut down the ICE picnic.

Since the raids, CIMA has partnered with a local legal aid organization to help families who may be affected by raids in the future draw up legal documents that specify their contingency plans. Over 60 families have participated, answering questions such as: If you are deported, who will care for your child?

The stress infects even immigrants who are legal citizens. Individuals, even those who hold professional positions in the community, drive around with their passport for fear of being mistakenly detained. In hard times, Hinojosa notes, faith fuels people. Some members of his community exercise their faith through indigenous traditions such as smudging or herbal tinctures, others through church.

It helps for folks to know that they are not alone in a moment of crisis. They have a community and tools, he says.

Paradoxically, the scorched earth tactics of the Trump administration have only served to empower community organizing, know-your-rights education, and the resilience of immigrants in Hinojosas neck of the woods. Never before have they claimed with such conviction that they belong here.

We will end ICE, Porras Rosas says.

This system is making millions of dollars out of our bodies. We will not allow [ICE] to continue taking our children and snatching people from our communities.

In Miramar, Florida an ICE facility processes undocumented immigrants from the southern part of the state. Migrants travel for hours to find out whether they will be deported, lining up outside the facility as early as 4 a.m.

They wait for hours in the elements, sometimes from sunrise to sunset, often enduring extreme heat without access to shelter or restrooms. Many will return the following day if their case is not decided the first day. Sometimes they are processed, released, and given a date to return or an ankle bracelet; others are removed directly to a detention facility for deportation.

A steadfast group of local volunteers sets up tables across the street each week to offer free water, food, and coffee.

Destiny Aman, a first-time volunteer who happened to be vacationing nearby, says, They describe how things used to be when longtime residents checked in once a year and how things escalated under Trump. . . . Some old enough to push walkers, some whove lived in the United States for more than 30 years have disappeared inside the building, with families calling in panic, asking what to do. The Miramar Circle of Protection formed in response with a threefold mission: Comfort, Witness, Resist.

Through a local organization, Aman and her spouse, Julie VanEerden, visited a detention center the previous day to spend time with detainees, whom they described as warm and open, grateful for a visit and a chance to connect.

The presence of God in that place struck a deep chord within the couple. They saw God in the peaceful faces of babies hugging their papis, unconcerned about security protocol; in the volunteers working hard to ensure detainees are not deported, possibly to their deaths; in the detainees themselves who have entrusted their lives into divine hands. They saw Jesus in the family who shared a long prayer even as the guards flickered the lights to signal the end of the visit.

The Christmas story bears a shadow side, and the material joy of Christmas that culminates in opening the last gift under the tree is not in keeping with the historical practice of Christmas. The fullness of the Christmas story is in both its beauty and brokenness.

Long ago the Christian tradition set aside 12 days to celebrate Christmasinviting the faithful to linger over the Christ child, to hear the testimony of the ragtag shepherds confronted by an angelic chorus, to journey with the magi, and to face the brutality of King Herod and the harrowing flight of the Holy Family to Egypt.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents, marked during the first half of the 12 days of Christmas, recalls Herods massacre of young children in Bethlehem, a fate Jesus escaped when his family took flight as political refugees on the run for their lives.

The Holy Familys escape to Egypt parallels the present plight of immigrant families fleeing the violence of the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. As in the exodus, when the Israelites were led by Moses out of slavery in Egypt, Mary and Joseph fled Bethlehem to seek life for their child and to escape Herods reign of terror.

Like them, many immigrants flee as refugees from their own homelands. As farmable land grows scarce, multinational corporations exploit cheap labor, gang violence partners with government corruption, and the lives of ordinary families collapse into danger and despair, they turn their eyes north. They risk everything to carve out a livelihood that will support their families and allow their children to grow in peace.

The incarnation of Christ claims that Gods Spirit resides in human fleshin tender feet, blistered by flight; in the parched throat aching with thirst; in the stench of sweat-slickened fear. The Bible makes plain Gods call to welcome the stranger, to care for the foreigner, to offer hospitality to the other.

Our faith is not just about affirming immigrants, says Dean-Ware. It was founded by immigrants, starting with Abraham.

Indeed, laws sewn into the very fabric of Israels society reflect the value of the stranger. In the Hebrew scriptures, religious law required that landowners harvest their crops while leaving an outer ring along the border of their property to be harvested by the resident alien (Lev. 23:22).

Abraham, the father of three faiths, welcomes strangers as if they were long-awaited guests only to discover that they are angels bringing the good news that God will bless Sarah with a child. In the gospels, Jesus reappears as a stranger on the road to Emmaus, and the disciples recognize the risen Christ only after offering him hospitality and breaking bread together.

Christians are called to care for strangers as if they were Christ incarnate, to harbor refugees as if they were the Christ child on the run.

The Catholic Church in the United States, in particular, is an immigrant church, claims Tony Cube, manager of Justice for Immigrants, an advocacy campaign for immigration reform legislation. Going back to Irish Catholics, Italians and southern Europeans, andin the last half of the 20th centurySoutheast Asian and Filipino refugees and immigrants. Our faith says: Seek justice for the oppressed. Clothe the naked. Period. End of sentence. Nowhere does it tell us to ask for papers first.

Indeed, Pope Francis chose the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa for his first trip outside of Rome in 2013. He acknowledged the plight of migrants and refugees by casting a wreath into the sea that has swallowed so many migrants and their shared dream of a better home. Migrants are symbols of all those rejected by . . . society, the pope preached earlier this year as he commemorated that visit.

On July 12 Nadeem spoke to a crowd in Kalamazoo gathered for a local Lights for Liberty event. A window of the historical church was wrenched open, and her words streamed through the open air. I have lived here for 16 months. If I can be strong and hopeful, then you can be strong and hopeful, she said. A cheer rose up from the crowd.

Christmas proclaims the good news that God is with humankind and made known in the stranger. Through the incarnate Christ, God is made manifesta God who identifies with the poor, a God known in the vulnerability of an infant, a God who will suffer in solidarity with the crucified peoples of the world. When Christians accompany the poor, the immigrant, and the stranger, they discover God with fresh eyes.

This article also appears in the December 2019 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 84, No. 12, pages 2428). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.

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How the Christmas story calls Catholics to action - U.S. Catholic magazine

Each community has a responsibility to provide hope, life-saving medications, community support and meaning to those who addicted to substances, an addictions specialist urged Beckley Rotary Club members on Tuesday.

Dr. James H. Berry, DO, associate professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry at West Virginia University School of Medicine and the Director of Addictions, reported that the most up-to-date data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that moreAmericansdied from drug overdoses in 2017 than during the Vietnam conflict.

With 70,000 overdose deaths in 2017, the addiction epidemic claimed more lives than car crashes, firearms and HIV deaths, Berry said.

"If things do not change, a number of indicators project there will be 700,000 people who have died from overdoses (from 2016 to 2025)," said Berry. "This is a crisis of epic proportions.

"It's not hyperbole to say how serious this crisis is."

Opioid deaths increased by 345 percent from 2001 to 2016, with West Virginia leading the nation in 2017 in overdose deaths at 58 deaths per 100,000 residents. Ohio, ranked second in overdose deaths, had 46 per 100,000 residents.

Berry reported that, since 1917, the life expectancy of Americans has declined due to "deaths of despair." The three main drivers for the lower life expectancy overdose, suicide and liver failure caused by addiction are all closely related to addiction.

Montana leads the nation in suicide deaths, but West Virginia is the highest state for deaths "east of the Mississippi," said Berry, who treats patients who are addicted to opioids and other drugs.

As heroin and fentanyl and methamphetamine abuse increases in the wake of the prescription pill crisis, communities in the state must make recovery from addiction a priority, he said.

"What can we do, as a community, to give people hope?" Berry said. "One is, if someone has an addiction, this is a treatable disease.

"Iget to see people get better from addiction all the time, and it's making sure we have access to evidence-based treatment that helps people get better.

"Every community should support and create what they could to make sure people have access to life-saving medications and a number of life-saving therapies.

"Whenever it is possible, help people get into treatment."

When addicted, a person's brain and emotions arein an irregular state.

Treatment is vital, and the entire community must encourage an addicted person totake the step of getting into recovery.

Often, addiction causes depression and anxiety.

Berry explained that addiction just like the disease Diabetes Type II has social, biological and psychological factors.

Psychologically, people choose to engage in a behavior because they do not believe that the behavior is harmful. The mind also affects the disease in other ways. For example, during times of depression or anxiety, a disease will often get worse, due to stress hormones and chemicals.

"Those we bump shoulders with, on a regular basis, they will affect our health, for good or for ill," said Berry, explaining how addiction has a social aspect.

Biologically, children with addicted parents are much more likely to become addicted, due to genetics. Also, a disease harms an organ or system in the body.

In addiction, the brain is changed.

Dopamine, a "feel good" chemical, is releasedby a healthy brain when a person hugs a family member, shares fellowship, walks indoors on a cold day or works out, said Berry. Dopamine binds to receptors in the brain, and the person feels happiness.

Opioids and other drugsamplify the good feeling of dopamine, but the addicted person develops fewer dopamine receptors. As a result, they feel depressed and anxious without the drug. After prolonged use, the drug no longer makes the person feel good, but the person must take it just to avoid feeling depressed and anxious or getting physically sick.

The high suicide rate is linked to depression and anxiety. When asked by a Rotarian whether overdose deaths are intentional or not, Berry saidthe information is not recorded.

He said that, with his patients who have survived an overdose, the most common response is, "'I wasn't necessarily trying to kill myself, but it would've been OK if I died.'

"Where do you classify that?" Berry asked. "It's not a suicide attempt. At the same time, it's not an accident.

"It's this despair thing again."

Churches are able to give meaning to those who are addicted by embracing them and helping them to find spiritual meaning and community. Business owners can help by offering a job to someone who is in recovery for addiction.

"It's having a sense of purpose," said Berry. "Creating jobs for people gives them meaning. Welcoming people into your churches and places of worship...that can also be so valuable in giving people meaning, so they're not looking, constantly, at themselves."

Finally, it is important to connect with people who are addicted.

"We don't exist as islands unto ourselves," said Berry. "We exist in community.

"I am absolutely convinced that West Virginia may be at the heart of the problem (with addiction), but I'm also convinced we're at the heart of the solution, because we've got the talent, and we've got the heart.

"I'm convinced we're going to be able to do it, and we're going to learn some things that will be able to help the rest of the country and the rest of the world."

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Community must help and give hope to addicted neighbors - Beckley Register-Herald