Category Archives: Intentional Communities

Lighthouse claims that they have never denied admission to a student based on sexual orientation, although they stand by their right to operate according to their policies.

Thirty states, including Indiana, use some form of tax funds for school choice programs. None of those states that use vouchers prohibit admissions policies that discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity, according to a study by Suzanne Eckes, a professor at Indiana University.

Legal and policy experts across the country defended Lighthouses right to operate according to its stated religious beliefs, including the schools attorney and spokesman Brian Bailey.

Parents are free to choose which school best comports with their religious convictions, Bailey said. For a real choice and thus real liberty to exist, the government may not impose its own orthodoxy and homogenize all schools to conform to politically correct attitudes and ideologies.

Eckes argued that schools that receive vouchers should not be allowed to have admissions policies like those of Lighthouse and cited the federal protections afforded to racial minorities, whileLily Eskelsen Garca, president of the National Education Association, said that private schools should not receive government funds at all on the basis that private schools can choose to deny admission to students.

Lindsey Burke, director of theHeritage Foundations education policy studies, said that Lighthouses policies have no parallel to racial discrimination.

Racism was based on identity and skin color and had no reasonable basis, Burke said. This is about whether a student, a family is going to live out their communal beliefs of the school that they have chosen to attend. These are intentional communities that are built upon a moral code that they have decided on.

As for the lefts claim that private schools are prohibited from discriminating based on sexual orientation,Dick Komer, senior attorney with Institute for Justice, said that simply isnt the case.

If the people who are grilling DeVos believe that sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity, then they should propose amendments to the statues that they have written and given her to enforce, Komer said. The Congress is supposed to write the law, the agency is supposed to administer what Congress has given them. And Congress hasnt given it to them.

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Left Cries Foul Over Christian School's Right To Vouchers - The Daily Caller

Recently I had a chance to ask some questions to Laney of Lobo Marino to learn a little bit more about what their music is all about. Here's what I found out.

1.LoboMarinoseems like a group that could only exist in a city like Richmond that is so well known for creativity and the arts. How has Richmond helped you grow as a band?

Richmond has been essential for us. First, in the sheer inspiration of being in a place surrounded by artist and activists. Jameson and I met in Richmond working at a Vegetarian Restaurant called Harrison Street Cafe. We both played in different bands, I was in an old time band called "Arise Sweet Donkey" and Jamesonwas in an experimental Hard Core band called "Our Stable Violent Star". After Living together for a year in Richmond we decided to sell our things and spend a year traveling and working on farms in South America. That year turned into multiple years of traveling.... But Richmond, full of friends and forever faithful would always welcome us back on whims. Dozens of members of our Richmond Community took turns hosting us when we would come home for a month or two. Our old job at Harrison Street would even take us back for temp work whenever we were in town.

There is the amazing quality in Richmond... So many people come and go and come back again. You can be gone for a year and when you come back you are welcomed home like you never left. Someone might say "Hey! I haven't see you for a while" and you are like "well yea, I was just traveling cross country for six months" and they just shrug and you pick up right where you left off. Once part of the community, you are always part of the community.

2. I've read that you guys have opened up your home to serve as a meeting space for political action. Could you talk a little bit about what kind of events you guys host and the types of political action are you trying to encourage through your activities?

We run a space called the Earth Folk Collective. It is a 200-Year- old farmhouse that we are restoring on an acre of land in the city. We grow a lot of our own food at the space and offer donation based workshops to the community on topics like composting, seed saving, mushroom cultivation, yoga, poetry, know your rights, collective living, basket weaving, self care.... All kinds of things. The Richmond Herbalism guild uses our space for workshops and trade posts. We have hosted many concerts and and community gatherings as well as art builds for protests.

Because Richmond is the capital of the state of Virginia, we are a hub for protests. In our garage we have a collection of drums that we use for our pop-up drum line which we bring out to actions and protests. Those drums lay beside a giant puppet that is also used for street actions and political parades. We are members of a political puppet troupe called "All the Saints Theater Company. It is inspired by Bread and Puppet up in Vermont. There are so many amazing political organizations holding it down in Richmond these days and collaboration in art and action is a core characteristic of the scene.

Richmond is also the hub of the company Dominion Power who holds the monopoly on Virginia's electrical infrastructure. At the moment we are busy organizing statewide with grassroots groups to stop the massive network of natural Gas Pipelines that Dominion Power is trying to build across our state.

Another issue related to Dominion and the environment is the concern for our water. The James River runs through Richmond. It is the heart of our city and the source of our drinking water. Dominion power has huge power plants on the banks of the James. For years these facilities have been burning coal and currently have hundreds of acres of land which are covered with coal ash ponds, areas where the left over coal fly ash is contained in water. Many of these ponds are unlined and are leaking toxic heavy metals through the water table into our river. The EPA has required that the coal ash be contained in a safer way, but the technology for such a large scale project is not yet fully realized. Last year Dominion was given a permit by the Department of Environmental Quality totoxifythe James river upstream from Richmond. The people of our city freaked out and thousands marched to say that we would not allow this company to destroy theecosystem of our sacred river. During this time our home was used to house art supplies for an awareness action. I remember once our friend from Chesapeake Climate Action Network was painting a banner on our porch and the paint bled through the sheet and we ended up having the Governor's name "McAuliffe" painted on our porch.

3. Your new album is impressive, what's next forLoboMarinoand how do you guys see the project progressing in the coming months and years?

We have always wantedLoboMarinoto be grassroots. As we learn from the earth by growing our own food, we havelearneda new type of patience.LoboMarinois not a flash in the pan pop band. We have been building this project for 7 years touring around the world playingDIYspaces, intentional communities and spiritual communities. Our music is an expression of our life journey and right now it's all about sowing seeds and watching them grow. We didn't feel like we needed a big promotional machine to birth our new album "The Mulberry House"... We look at it as though we have prepared the soil and sowed the seed and now we just have to wait and water every now and then.

We continue to tour nationally and are planning an international tour next year. We are on the road playing music about 6 months out of the year.

This Emerging Artist is based in Austin, check out other talented locals we picked for our Austin Artist of the Month poll below!

This poll will end on July 3, 2017 at 11.59 PM ET

Please stay positive with the comments, support for other bands is one of the secrets of "success."

Results as of June 19, 2017, 11:37 pm

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Lobo Marino talks to The Deli about Richmond, politics, and music - The Deli Magazine National (blog)

Sister Tracey Horan, the winner of the 2017 Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award for her work to reduce poverty and racial inequity, talks transformation and relationships she has learned from. Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar

Sister Tracey Horan listens to speakers at City Market, during a vigil and march from the City Market to Christ Cathedral on Monument Circle, calling on city and county law enforcement to stop supporting unlawful detentions of undocumented immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Thursday, June 15, 2017.(Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)Buy Photo

Tracey Horan had never been behind the walls of a convent before she moved to El Paso, Texas, after college to teach middle-school math.

She was surprised to learn that the religious sisters watched TV, told jokes and evendrank beer on occasion. But they also were deeply spiritual and committed to social justice issues. Horan, who was on ajourney of self-discovery and discernment, wondered if she was being called to the religious life.

The Indianapolis native and Roncalli High School grad lived with the Sisters of Charity for two years, growing not only in her faith but in her awareness of systemic poverty, discrimination and economic oppression issues the sistersconfronted in their work and discussed at the dinner table every evening.

Today, the29-year-old one-time cheerleader-turned-teacher-turned-community activist is a second-year mission novice with the Sisters of Providence, founded by Saint Mother Theodore Guerinin 1840. She will take her firstvows this year vows of poverty, chastity and obedience on her way to becoming a full member of the religious order based at St.-Mary-of-the-Woods.

More from Maureen Gilmer

How do you live when you know you are dying?

Against all odds, they graduated. Now, look what their community is doing for them

Women likeHoran, now known as Sister Tracey, area rarity these days. New recruits in the ranks of nuns and sistersin the United States haveplummetedfor decades, though recent years have shown a slight trend upward. (What's the difference between a nun and a sister? Nuns typically live a life of contemplative prayer in a monastery, while sisters are rooted in community ministry.)

According to National Religious Vocation Conference data, more than 90 percent of the nation's 58,000 nuns and sisters are 60 and older.The median age of the 300 sisters in the Sisters of Providenceis 75, Sister Tracey said, adding,"I bring down our average, I'm proud to say."

She senses a resurgence in interest in religious life, pointingto her own "class" of sisters as proof.

Sister Tracey Horan prays at Christ Cathedral, during a vigil and march to call on city and county law enforcement to stop supporting unlawful detentions of undocumented immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.(Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)

"Wehave eightwomen in formation, which is exciting.Alot of communities aren't getting any new people."

"Ithink people are looking for something, asense of intentional community," said the young sister, who looks like most everyone else at a local coffee shop on a Monday morning, dressed in slacks, a T-shirt and sandals in the summer heat."It takes a lot to be focused on this kind ofmission, so it is important to be with other people who can strengthen you."

It's hard for her to describe why she feels this is the life for her. "It just fits. I equateit to falling in love. Ifeel like Ican be my fullest self in this life."

Her parents, longtime members of St. Jude Catholic Church on the south side,were pleased but skeptical whenshe announced her plans to join the religious life.

She had enjoyed an active social life in high schooland college, all while holding true to her Catholic faith. Joe and Eileen Horan thought their daughterwould follow a more traditional path. But she had long felt there was something more she was called to do.

"My parents didn't believe me at first;they thought it was a phase. Over time, they started to see I was the happiest I'd ever been."

Her mission as a Catholic and a Sister of Providenceis advocating for the dignity andwell-being of all people, paying special attention to the poor and disenfranchised. It's fitting then that her faith journey and ministry search brought her back to Indianapolis last summer when she joined the Indianapolis Congregation Action Network (IndyCAN)and theJustice for Immigrants Campaign of the Archdiocese as a bilingual community organizer.

It's the perfect intersection of faith and civic engagement, she said. She mobilizes support for causes critical to Catholic social teachings. And her status as a sister brings a moral presence to bear, whether it's in meetings with city officials on mass transit or in organizing a public rally toforce action on what she and IndyCAN call the unlawful detentionof immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Indianapolis.

She calls it "sending a moral message."And she has no problem calling out policies she considers illegal and immoral.

But when religious leaders and others have the opportunity to meet with policy makers and put a human face on a policy outcome,the conversation shifts, she said.

"Me being a sister and being part of IndyCAN and working on this in a really clear and public way, I think gives people hope. It really is an extension of the church."

Her co-workers say she's the perfect messenger.

"She is so spiritually in tune, such a divine being," said Nicole Barnes, IndyCAN operations manager. "Her sisterhood is integrated into who she is ...it's not something she does it's her way of being. It just oozes out of her, and she's this tiny thing, but she's feisty and serious about justice for people."

Sister Tracey lives with four other Sisters of Providence in the Nora neighborhood. Each has her own work to do in the community, but they carve out time to pray together regularly, and they take turns cooking.

To relax, the young sister watches "Parks and Recreation" and "Call of the Midwife." She's also an enthusiastic runner and hiker. She keeps up with old friends on Facebook but isn't able to spend much time with them. "I've really changed a lot since those days."

At 84, Sister Marilyn Herber is the senior member of the household, and shesays Sister Tracey gives her hope.

"She's just a great example to me," said Sister Marilyn,who entered religious life in 1952."The young people who come today are so filled with life and goodness and a desire to make change in this world. They get it."

If it's possible to be an idealist and a realist, that would describe Sister Tracey.

The Rev. Chris Wadelton, pastor at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church on the east side, saw both sides at a February rally organized by the young sister and IndyCAN that drew 2,000 people. The City of Inclusion rally was held in response to policies by the Trump administration that some think unfairly targetimmigrants, Muslims and refugees.

He marvels that she is able to balance her religious training with a job that demands long hours. "She brings a renewed focus to faith-based social justice. To see a young, dynamic person, talented in so many ways, choose religious life, that's inspiring."

Juan Perez-Corona, 45, has seen Sister Tracey in action, working to help people with immigration issues, housing, medical care and employment. He's been so impressed with her commitment that he now volunteers alongside her.

"We are so blessed to have her," the father of three said. "It doesn't matter color, race, religion, she just wants to help people."

Perez-Corona, who has been in the country since 1988, now has legal status here, but he's never forgotten the fear he felt 10 years ago when he said he was pulled over by a police officer in Indianapolis for no reason and asked to produce residency papers. He spent nine days in jail, but it took years to resolve his case with IndyCAN's help.

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Sister Tracey said examples like that inspire her to do the hard work that others, even many within the church, are reluctant to embrace.

"This is the heart of our mission," she said. "When our sisters first came here, they were really pioneers, and that's still kind of our role. (Sisters) often choose to be in places where other people tend not to be. But if we're not willing to get out in the trenches, what are we doing?"

It's also challenging, she said, because "it forces us to ask questions that are uncomfortable."

Take immigration, for example. "Were dealing with this narrative that says all immigrants are criminals and that the only people being deported are criminals, which we know isnt true," she said. She has worked with IndyCan to develop a hotline for immigrants and others to call if they feel threatened by authorities.

She wasn't always so welcoming to undocumented immigrants, she said, recalling a high school discussion more than 10 years ago about building a wallbetween the U.S. and Mexico.

"I was one of those who said, "They're criminals; it's pretty clear, they're breaking the law.' But I had no idea."

A teacher assigned her to research the other side of the argument. "I was so ticked off, but it was really smart of her. I had to see why are people crossing, what are their stories, what's behind this?"

Soshe allows some grace for those who are not yet willing to fight what she believes is a moral imperative.

"I have to remember my own transformation, and I've come a really long way as far as understanding and getting a broader picture of people's experiences and perspectives. If it's possible for me, being as stubborn as I am, it's possible for anyone."

Sister Tracey's work in the community was just recognizedby the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who held their Spring General Assembly in Indianapolis. In a reception Wednesday, she received the 2017 Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award, sponsored by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, for her work to reduce poverty and racial inequality.

In prepared remarks, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, formerly archbishop of Indianapolis, described Sister Tracey as a "dynamic young womanpromoting the common good among immigrants and brothers and sisters living in poverty."

While the day-to-day "slow work of God" is not always glamorous, her ministry lends hope, said Shoshanna Spector, executive director of IndyCAN.

"Society yearns for courageous, prophetic leaders who are prepared to inspire, speak out and support the most marginalized. Sister Tracey is this person."

Call IndyStar reporter Maureen Gilmer at (317) 444-6879. Follow her onFacebook,TwitterandInstagram.

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Young nun fights for justice for immigrants and the poor in Indy - Indianapolis Star

On June 10, The Capital Pride Alliance hosted its annual pride parade in Washington, D.C., but, for some in the LGBTQ community, the parade is a far cry from the origins its meant to be celebrating.

Annual pride parades were born out of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, when the police raided the gay club Stonewall Inn and patrons refused to leave. Marches and protests began across the country, commemorating the riots and demanding equal rights and protection under the law.

But many feel Capital Pride Alliance is ignoring its roots. Those frustrated with the annual parade found different ways to commemorate the event. Meet No Justice No Pride, Queer and Trans Night of Healing, and The Equality March.

PROTESTORS: Down down with deportation, up up with liberation!

EMMELIA TALARICO: Theres not a lot of celebrating going on these days. Theres not a lot of things to celebrate about, our rights are being stripped away from us, like as a trans woman, I never really had rights.

DAVID BRUINOOGE: As a cis gay white male of privilege, I feel a lot of people in that same category maybe thought the fight for gay rights and LGBTQ rights was over after gay marriage. And it couldnt be farther from the truth.

LOURDES ASHLEY HUNTER: Pride has never appealed to me, it was never a place for me; as a trans person, as a disabled person, as a black person. It didnt celebrate images that reflected what I look like.

TALARICO: Were building all of the art here. We have some banners, some signage.

DREW AMBROGI: No Justice No Prides belief is that the backbone of the LGBT community is marginalized LGBT folks, is trans women of color. For too long the movement, the LGBT movement has kind of this trickle down approach to rights that once the most wealthy LGBT folks get equality, then theyll help the rest of us. And they got their gay marriage rights and they kind of said all along, once we get gay marriage well fight for everyone. And its been a couple years now, we dont really see that happening and so were going to demand that it happens.

PROTESTORS: We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!

TALARICO: We have three different blockades. Well be doing a hard lockdown, and a hard lockdown is where you and other people who youre taking action with physically lock down using equipment. Theyll be using chains as well as using lockboxes.

PROTESTORS: Its our history, dont deny it! Stonewall was a trans riot!

TALARICO: People are frustrated.

PROTESTORS: Hey hey, ho ho, these racist cops have got to go!

TALARICO: Us going after capital pride is us going after institutional power in this city and trying to transfer that, from those who have always had it, to those that actually need it.

AMBROGI: It really is catching on and resonating with I think what we see is a longstanding resentment of these organizations that put on these festivals with the primary goal of bringing in corporate money, selling things to the LGBT community. In this political climate we really feel like we can actually make our voices heard and get folks fired up about demanding something thats better.

PROTESTORS: Capital Pride is a sham!

SHAREESE CARMELLA MONE: Im a trans woman of color first. Im a trans woman first. I am human, first.

HUNTER: The queer and trans night of healing came together after a response from the community to have a space where folks could remember that pride was born out of resistance.

HUNTER: They wasnt marching because bitch, they couldnt wear what they wanted to wear. They was tired of getting beat up!

HUNTER: Its an opportunity for us to honor our ancestors, and honor those who have given their lives so that we can be here today. Its a fun event, its not just some white gay skinny cis heteronormative recreation of debauchery and mayhem. I mean you can have some of that too, but lets not forget that trans women of color have lost their lives, have fought in the streets, have fought the police with their heels, with bricks, with bottles so that we can march today, so lets just not forget that.

EQUALITY MARCH: Love, not hate, makes America great!

BRUINOOGE: I didnt want to celebrate this year with sponsorship. You know, banners everywhere. It didnt feel right to me at this time of year.

EQUALITY MARCH: No Justice, No peace!

BRUINOOGE: I felt it was necessary for our community to march. This is the most diverse national co-chairs of any march on Washington from the LGBT community. And that was intentional. We wanted those voices in leadership positions.

EQUALITY MARCH: Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like.

BRUINOOGE: With the political landscape that we live in right now and the issues that need to be addressed within our community, it felt like it needed to be stripped-down, bare-bones, grassroots, harking back to the original Pride.

SARA RAMIREZ: As we march today, I want to take a moment to remember the transgender, bisexual, gay, lesbian, and queer lives that cannot be with us here today.

BRUINOOGE: There are issues that affect our trans community, racial injustice, immigration injustice, these are all issues that affect our community. And they dont get highlighted.

DR IMANI WOODY: We are not invisible! We are not invisible!

BRUINOOGE: Hopefully, on Sunday, we inspire people to go home and use this mass mobilization and educate them to take action themselves in their own local communities.

TALARICO: I truly believe that pride should be a protest. Even to this day, theres a lot to protest in our community. Even if Obama was still in power, there would still be a lot to protest in our community.

BRUINOOGE: This is a way to activate us, to mobilize us, personally, for me, to participate in democracy and help these issues get out.

HUNTER: Pride is not supposed to be a celebration, its supposed to be a remembrance of the things that we have overcome and the fight that we still have for all of us to live unapologetically in our truths.

AMBROGI: If we really wanted to talk about what it means to support LGBTQ people, that would mean starting with the folks whose needs are the greatest. It would mean really supporting the folks who need support, not just doing the easy thing so that you can be celebrated as an ally.

See the rest here:

Resistance and Pride in 2017: How activists are commemorating Pride month - ThinkProgress

KEARNEY When Marta Moorman was growing up in a small town in Oklahoma, her parents refused to allow TV in the house. So when the community started a summer recreation program that included archery, badminton, swimming, childrens theater and more, she became hooked on recreation as a way of life.

My community and my family forced us to find other things to do, so we tried everything. If its fun you stick with it, she said.

Moorman has stuck with it. Shes now a professor of recreation at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She teaches others to develop sports, fitness, wellness and community recreation activities for individuals and groups.

For her teaching and leadership, CHI Health Good Samaritan will present Moorman the Healthy Community Award in the area of Recreation. Nominated by Kearney Park and Recreation, she is recognized for showing outstanding leadership in organized sports for youths or adults.

Recreational activities are her life, including games, music, sports, cooking, exercise and reading.

Recreation isnt just about the body; its about the whole person. Its a lot about being social. We need to be around others. Recreation is so valuable because you are not just sitting in a room with somebody. Youre playing with them. Youre seeing how their mind works, and you see that their skills may be way better than yours. You think, This is somebody I really need get to know, she said.

Since joining the UNK faculty 21 years ago, Moorman has seen changes in recreation and how U.S. families and communities play.

Historically, the focus of community recreation was on team sports, but we have seen an increase in the number of individual activities and commercial providers. Recreation has become more intentional: were doing it for a reason, she said.

People are conscious about being active and staying healthy, she said. Outdoor and adventure activities have shown dramatic increases in the past few years. Kearney has the new water trail in the canal and Turkey Creek. UNK has a new rock climbing wall. These types of activities are very popular.

Over the years she also seen more variety in activities offered here, and how Kearney comes together to solve problems. Twenty years ago, the hike-bike trail to Cottonmill Park was a single dirt track. Now its part of a hike-bike trail network that stretches from Cottonmill Park to The Archway and ending at Fort Kearney State Historical Park, she noted.

Parks have evolved and added more options for organized sports. New, too, are activities like Community Olympics and Senior Games, adventure races and trail walks.

Kearney is good at deciding what they want and going for it. When the community decided that we needed more ball fields, we figured out a way to make it work. When Kearney decides what it wants, we make it happen. Were progressive in that way. I like that a lot.

Involving her UNK students in planning and organizing events is just as important as being involved herself, she said.

She was part of the Patriot Park Development Committee. She also sat on the Park and Recreation Advisory Board and the Rowe Sanctuary Committee, and is a member of the Nebraska and National Recreation and Park Associations.

In serving, she has aimed to elevate the importance of recreation as a community and individual need.

Recreation people always have to justify what they do. Its easy to justify health and exercise, but people look at recreation as oh, thats just for fun. But if its not fun, people wont participate. Activities that are fun and social are very important both for individuals and the community, she said.

Read more from the original source:

UNK professor's dedication to recreation earns her Healthy Community Award - Kearney Hub

In December 2016, when thousands of Native Americans, environmental activists and their supporters were camped on the high plains of North Dakota hoping to stymie an oil pipeline mapped beneath the drinking water source of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, a Lakota spiritual leader, addressed a massive interfaith prayer service. People from Native American nations across the United States had traveled to camp at Standing Rock and on nearby land, the most comprehensive gathering of native people since before the Indian wars of the 1870s. Indigenous people from Hawaii, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and Honduras arrived at the camps and hoisted their flags beside those of 300 American tribes.

Brayton Shanley, a Catholic peace and environmental activist who lives in an intentional community in rural Massachusetts, has a shock of white hair and the robust energy of someone who spends a great deal of time outdoors. At the end of November, he drove to North Dakota in a truck filled with straw bales, offered as insulation on the windswept, winter prairie. Joe Fortier, S.J., a former entomology professor at St. Louis University, who for the past 15 years has lived and ministered on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State, arrived the day before, changing out of his usual clothes and into a clerical collar, so people would know a Catholic priest was supporting the protest. Father Fortier, a self-effacing man whose gentleness belies the depth of his convictions, felt compelled to align himself with the people gathered at Standing Rock.

The camps had become a place to take a stand for the right to clean water and against its privatization, contamination and degradation. But they were also a site of pilgrimage, a place of profound prayer where Lakota women walked to the Cannonball River each morning to enact a water ceremony and where chants in the Lakota language, called to the rhythm of round drums, rose from the camp at dawn and Lakota elders tended a sacred fire all day and night. Water is life, they said. Defend the sacred.

On this biting cold December day, when fingers went numb if exposed to the air for more than a few minutes, more than 1,000 people gathered for a three-hour prayer service in which a rabbi, a Buddhist monk, various Protestant clergy and Father Fortier each offered prayers before the fire that Lakota elders had been tending throughout the protest. They spoke of their faiths common commitment to caring for the earth and their common belief in the sacredness of the physical world. Looking Horse spoke of the threat to clean water at Standing Rock as only one of millions of attacks on the integrity of the earths elements. Fighting back would take a particular kind of power, he said. We will be victorious through tireless, prayer-filled and fearless nonviolent struggle. Standing Rock is everywhere.

A few months into the Trump administration, oil is flowing through the pipeline and the historic encampment has been dispersed. The oil industry won. But Looking Horse may yet have been correct. The explicitly religious and imagination-grabbing protest at Standing Rock has inspired similar encampments and other forms of protest in defense of clean water across the country. From Pennsylvania to Texas, Florida to New Jersey and in South Dakota, Ohio, Massachusetts and Canada, newly emboldened water protectors have taken to the land in hopes of disrupting oil and natural gas pipelines they consider dangerous. For many of these protectors, defending access to clean water is a project rich in religious and spiritual meaning. They draw inspiration from Laudato Si as well as indigenous religious practice.

The tribal leadership of the Lakota Sioux is pursuing lawsuits against Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based company behind the Dakota Access pipeline. Some of the Lakota and other indigenous people who were part of the Standing Rock protests have reconvened at a prayer camp on the Cheyenne River Reservation downriver in South Dakota.

A coordinated campaign

On May 9, the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion, a coalition of 121 indigenous groups from the United States and Canada, launched a coordinated divestment campaign against the banks funding the Dakota Access pipeline and crude oil pipelines snaking from Canada to Mexico. Religious congregations organized under the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are engaged in shareholder activism, urging major banks to withdraw from financing the Dakota Access pipeline and demanding that corporations from Coca-Cola to Campbell Soup adopt specific policies respecting water and the rights of local communities to consultation. The Sisters of Charity of Halifax presented a shareholder resolution at the May 11 general shareholder meeting of Enbridge, an energy transportation company with a 27.5 percent share in the Dakota Access pipeline. The resolution called for the company to address social and environmental risks in its acquisition deals, particularly those involving indigenous people. The resolution was rejected by shareholders, but the company committed to broader disclosure in the sustainability report it produces each year. The Jesuit Committee on Investment Responsibility has been working with large agribusiness companies that trade on the New York Stock Exchange to convince them to adopt sustainable water management practices and join the United Nations CEOWater Mandate, an initiative to engage businesses in water stewardship and sustainable development goals.

Cities, counties, public employee pension funds and individuals have withdrawn $5 billion from companies invested in the Dakota Access pipeline in an echo of the the divestment movement against South African apartheid in the 1980s. Major investment banks in Norway, the Netherlands and France have sold their shares of loans to Energy Transfer Partners. The Jesuits, women religious, Catholic Workers and others have joined or deepened their involvement in water protection efforts. They draw links between the environmental battles of indigenous people in the United States and those elsewherenotably in Honduras and in the Amazon region, where several environmentalists have been killed by corporate security forces and assassins linked to the national military forces.

We are here

In Conestoga, Pa., a farm field along the route of a natural gas pipeline has been transformed into a quiet protest site. On weekends, area residents gather to sing, pray and make art. They have been pushing for three years for their municipal governments to ban the proposed pipeline, citing instances of natural gas explosions and tainted drinking water. They attempted legal maneuvers to escape eminent domain to no avail, explained Mark Clatterbuck, a Conestoga resident and professor of religion at Montclair State University. He and his wife, Melinda, a Mennonite pastor, have been central actors in the pipeline opposition. Out of options, in February, Lancaster Against Pipelines, an association of local citizens, launched the Lancaster Stand in this placid corner of the county famous for its gently undulating farmland and its Amish community. If were not careful we could lose the countryside and then what would we have? Thats whats at risk, said Tim Spiese, the Lancaster Against Pipelines board president, as he stood in the unplanted corn field before a large whitewashed barn with the words Welcome to the Stand painted in block letters on its side.

On a Saturday in early April, two dozen people, most in their 50s and 60s, are gathered inside a large army tent. Seated on low benches made from cement blocks and long 2-by-8 boards, they are shaking painted maracas and beating rhythm sticks as two women with guitars lead the group: We are here standing strong in a ripe old place/ Solid as a tree/ silent as a rock/ We are here in a ripe old place. The back wall of the tent is rolled up, open to the breeze, framing the Lancaster County hills in spring: budding trees and green fields. More than 300 people have completed training in nonviolent protest at the camp. Committees meet to plan civil disobedience, to sort food donations and devise a rainwater collection system.

In May, Regina Braveheart, a Lakota woman who survived the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1973 and was part of the prayer at Standing Rock, visited the Lancaster Stand to urge the activists on and share stories. For Kathleen Meade, a case manager in a brain trauma rehabilitation center, who like many of her neighbors relies on well water, participating in the Lancaster Stand has meant forming deep friendships and standing up for what she values. We just so pride ourselves on the land here. Its horse people and dairy farmers, outdoors people and Amish. Whats unique is that Lancaster County is Republican, and this unites a lot of us, the idea that the government cant just come and take your land, she said as she stood in the afternoon sun in the breezy field, gazing across the round hills. Its just amazing how the existing structure is set up for the corporations, not the people.... We realize that were up a creek and if we dont do something soon, were out of luck.

Mr. Clatterbuck and other Lancaster people visited the camps at Standing Rock in the fall and were struck by the prayerful attitude, the deeply spiritual stance of the Lakota leaders. They noticed how it affected other activists. The language thats used is the language of the sacred, said Mr. Clatterbuck, who edited a volume on Native American and Christian interaction this year called Crow Jesus: Personal Stories of Native Religious Belonging, published by University of Oklahoma Press. All of these kinds of religious streams are feeding in together. The way religious language is fueling the resistance right now, religion becomes relevant again.

So many people in conservative and bucolic Lancaster County, hardly a hotbed of protest, have been drawn to the Stand because it represents something deeper than the defense of property values or landowner rights (important as those might be), Mr. Clatterbuck said. Instead, they see a moral imperative to protect the place they call home, to care for the their corner of creation.

Pope Francis instructed the same embrace of the integrity of creation in Laudato Si, writing that access to clean drinking water is a fundamental human right and that humans need to live in concert with the earth.

Saving a fragile system

Cherri Foytlin is not Catholic, but she takes Pope Francis words to heart. I couldnt understand how people can pray to God, praising his creation, and then not do everything they can to care for it. Its like saying Picasso is a great artist and then ripping up his paintings, she said. The oil that moves through the Dakota Access pipeline will eventually finish its journey in Louisiana, where Ms. Foytlin lives. A former newspaper writer, she has been working for environmental justice in the Louisiana wetlands since BPs Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. While reporting on the spill, she saw that many bayou crawfishermen, who have made their living in the swamps of Louisiana since their ancestors were expelled from French Acadia, had their livelihoods destroyed, and she saw how the oil company lied about and covered up the extent of the damage. The miasmic grandeur of the sleepy bayou, with its ancient cypress trees, which began growing when Christ walked beside the Jordan, and its drooping moss, in whose humid tangle migrating birds seek rest, were under grave threat, she realized.

These systems are quite fragile, really. I think how quickly we can lose that, she said. Pipelines have criss-crossed the bayou country for a generation, ferrying oil and natural gas to refineries on the coast, a significant component of Louisianas economy. But Ms. Foytlin believes this latest one, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, is too dangerous. And it only anticipates 12 permanent jobs. The proposed pipeline channels through bayous already damaged by previous infrastructure, which has chewed away at the swampland and degraded its ability to absorb storms. The loss of Louisiana wetlands was one of the reasons Hurricane Katrina and more recent flooding elsewhere in the state have been so devastating. The company constructing the Bayou Bridge Pipeline was fined in early May by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for spilling several million gallons of thick chemical-laced mud into Ohio wetlands, during drilling for a separate pipeline there. The slurry, which is used to make underground space for laying pipes, suffocated plants and aquatic life in the wetland that helps filter water for nearby farmland. Ohios environmental protection agency expects it will take years to restore the wetland.

With Bold Louisiana, a community organizing group she directs, and a network of environmental, homeowner, crawfishermen and indigenous groups, Ms. Foytlin is trying to inform Louisianans of the threat to their water and their wetlands. The groups are leafleting at New Orleans Jazzfest and protesting at the state capital. They are sending postcards to their elected officials and raising money through bake sales. Ms. Foytlin, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation and originally from Oklahoma, visited Standing Rock to show her support and be part of the historic gathering of indigenous people. More recently she traveled to the Two Rivers camp near Marfa, Tex., where protesters were trying to stop a pipeline that would flow under the Rio Grande, carrying U.S. natural gas for export. That camp was broken up in April and that arm of the pipeline, another Energy Transfer Partners project, was completed.

I wanted to let them know that what they were doing was important, Ms. Foytlin said, adding that the power of the Standing Rock prayer camps continues to reverberate. People felt activated and connected spiritually in the water and the land, she said. Standing Rock continues. People are eager to put it to bed, but its not over. These little people are still together and that has power. An amalgam of groups, Ms. Foytlins among them, plans to launch a protest camp deep in the bayous in late June, when they expect the state to give Energy Transfer Partners final approval permits for the pipeline. On rafts built from repurposed plastic bottles and water barrels, with art and music and a deep love for their unique southern Louisiana waterways, theyll make a watery stand. The camp is called Leau Est La Vie, or Water Is Life.

Our common home

On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, people are still digesting the experience of Standing Rockand carrying on the work, said Peter Klink, S.J., the vice president of mission and ministry and former president of the Jesuit Red Cloud Indian School on Pine Ridge. At the height of the protests, the girls basketball team at Red Cloud wore Water Is Life slogans on their jerseys. Lakota people from Pine Ridge joined the encampment and some took central roles in promoting the divestment campaign. What we need to continue to nurture is: How are we going to care for our common home, Mother Earth? Im not sure we can close our eyes to what we are doing on a daily basis, Father Klink said. A consumerist, acquisitive culture is ultimately driving the environmental crisis, he believes. If we dont check that machine, that sense that what we have is never enough, that becomes the motor of destruction of our common home.

During the Standing Rock encampment, the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States issued a statement in support of the Lakota peoples right to sovereignty and clean water. Tashina Rama, who is executive director of development at the Red Cloud Indian School and daughter of Dennis Banks, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, testified on the Dakota Access pipeline threats to water at a February briefing for members of Congress organized by the Jesuit conference. Rama walked to a microphone in the briefing room and placed a few printed pages on the podium, then addressed the crowd in the Lakota language, identifying herself by way of her lineage and her ancestors. She named her parents, her grandmothers, her grandfathers. Switching to English, she spoke of the central need for access to clean water, invoking the sentiment found in Laudato Si that indigenous people must be consulted on projects that affect them, and she mourned the destruction of the Standing Rock camps, including one she stayed in with the female members of her family.

Ms. Rama underscored the value of water by invoking the Sun Dance, a Lakota ceremony that spans four days in June, when select members of the community dance all day in the blazing Badlands of South Dakota. There is little relief with no clouds or breeze. Our lips are cracked and our mouths dry because whatever water we had in our bodies was gone by the second day of dancing, she told the congressional staff. Our ancestors prayed in this way and they passed it down to us; we are taught that through this sacrifice the Great Spirit will hear our prayers. For four sacred days we give ourselves to the Sun. Our bodies are dying and we know that with that first drink of water when the Sun Dance is over, that water is life. I was raised to pray in this way, and I find it to be a humbling way to connect with the Great Spirit, our Creator God and to give of myself so my children and my family can be healthy. We owe it to ourselves and our descendants to protect what remaining lands we have, the lands where our ancestors roamed and the sacred sites where they are buried so they can have these ceremonies to pass on to their children and so on.

Forming right relationships

The Canadian and U.S. Jesuits see a link between protecting water and the defense of human and cultural rights. We see common environmental and human rights challenges from extractive industries facing indigenous people around the world, explained Cecilia Calvo, the senior adviser on environmental justice to the Jesuit Conference. And a common thread really is water. Of particular concern is what Ms. Calvo terms the criminalization of environmental and human rights activists who stand up for their rights. In Honduras, 123 environmental activists, most of whom protested against energy or mining companies, have been killed since a U.S.-supported coup in 2009, according to Global Witness. Similarly, environmental activists in the Amazon region face death threats. The worldwide association of Jesuits has taken on the defense of the Amazon region as a congregation-wide priority, calling it the lungs of the planet.

On March 17, Zebelio Kayap Jempekit, a member of the Awajun Wampi indigenous people of Peru, walked into the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C., carrying with him the pleas and alarm of thousands of Amazonian people. Part of a team representing a coalition of indigenous and church groups across nine Amazon countries, called Red Eclesial Panamazonia, Mr. Jempeki urged the commission to take action to preserve the rights of indigenous people to protect their ancestral lands and water. The delegation, which included Archbishop Pedro Ricardo Jimeno, S.J., of Huancayo, Peru, was hosted by the Jesuits, the Sisters of Mercy, the Maryknolls and other U.S. Catholic groups, and visited Georgetown University and Catholic University. Jempekit, speaking in Spanish and wearing a traditional headband of deep red and brilliant yellow flowers, told the commission that oil extraction had destroyed the drinking water and fishing in his home and spoke of a mining project that made water undrinkable and killed the fish in the river his people relied on. He has received death threats because of his work.

We see that not only in our own backyard are people facing environmental degradation and struggling for access to clean water, but around the world this is multiplied, said Ms. Calvo, who in early May attended the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum in Peru, which brought together people working on water and other environmental and social issues across the region. The threats to water are a call to examine our own economy, our lifestyle and what path do we want to be on, Ms. Calvo said. Those issues animate the Jesuit Conferences work in the United States as well. In the past few months, they have signed on to letters urging the Trump administration not to weaken elements of the Clean Water Act that regulate surface mining rules, to commit to the Paris climate agreement and to continue the Green Climate Fund, which helps the developing countries most affected by climate change. We recognize that water is a fundamental component of all life and that stewardship of water is part of our call to care for Gods creation, they wrote in a letter opposing an executive order that directed the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw from an aspect of the Clean Water Act which protects waterways and fish habitats.

Religious work on water moves in many streams, from the Religious Organizations Along the River, a coalition of groups in New Yorks Hudson Valley advocating against fracking and for Hudson River cleanup, to WaterSpirit, a retreat center on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace on the New Jersey shore. There, laypeople, Catholic and not, visit to deepen their connection to the most basic of elements, the water that flows through their bodies, washes the shore, bathes them in baptism and made possible the emergence of their earliest single-celled ancestors. WaterSpirit endeavors to link the spiritual aspect of water with the practical, corporeal concerns of caring for creation. The center has led group study workshops on Laudato Si and brought high school students to the shore to pray and catalog the plastic debris they find on the beach. The message is a mystical one, with its feet planted in the sand: You are part of this water of life.

In Pennsylvania, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, an order of sisters, have for several years been resisting the efforts of Williams Transco, a natural gas company that plans to drill through their land in West Hempfield Township in Lancaster County. In February, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave the company final approval to build on private land, including that of the Adorers. The sisters vehemently denounce the decision, said Sister Janet McCann, the U.S. regional councilor for the order. The pipeline would be a violation of the congregations land ethic, explained Sister Sara Dwyer, peace and justice coordinator for the community. The land ethic, a statement of the sisters theological and ecological beliefs adopted several years ago after contemplation of the religious dimensions of environmental crisis, commits them to respect the Earth as a sanctuary where all life is protected and to establish justice and right relationships so all creation might thrive, explained Sister Dwyer. In the land ethic statement, the sisters vow to seek collaborators to help implement land use policies and practices that are in harmony with our bioregions and ecosystems.

It is in fealty to that statement that the Adorers have decided to put their prayers where their feet stand. Their neighbors at Lancaster Against Pipelines, the people praying and building community in Conestoga, asked to erect an open-air chapel on the Adorers field that the gas company covets. It will serve as a place of prayer for people of any faith, a physical mark linking spiritual and physical resistance to industry that threatens water and earth. The chapel will be dedicated at a ceremonyJuly 9, attended by leadership of the Adorers, Lancaster Against Pipelines and supporters. It may not stand for longthe laws favor the energy companys right to take what land it wantsbut for Sister Dwyer and others, tireless, prayer-filled and fearless nonviolent struggle is worth standing for.

Eileen Markey is an independent reporter and the author of A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sr. Maura (Nation Books). She lives in the Bronx.

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Top Right Menu - America Magazine

It can be argued that our nation now stands at a more divided place than possibly any other time in our history, with the exception of the Civil War. Then, the divisions were around region (north versus south), economy (industrial versus agricultural) and morality (debates about the institution of slavery).

Today, we have serious and real divisions present around things such as ideology (conservatism versus liberalism), values (freedom versus equality) and even religion (believers versus non-believers).

In no way diminishing the terrible sacrifices that occurred during the Civil War, in some ways our divisions today are possibly more difficult to reconcile because they are not generally sectioned off into the north and the south. Our divisions are within states, communities, neighborhoods and even within families.

Instead of communities working together on their problems, the conversations quickly descend into fact wars, distortions based on any number of logical fallacies and intentional efforts to portray the other group as a "them" and undermine "their" legitimacy of even being able to engage in the conversation. Snarky sound bites and ad hominem attacks, coupled with an increasing "tuning out," become the norm.

While one need look no further than the daily circus that is the current state of our national government, the same sorts of behaviors that are all too common in Washington are increasingly present within our communities.

As many of you know, I am leaving the superintendent role with Eagle County Schools to assume that position with Jefferson County Public Schools on July 1. As I've worked on my professional transition from our relatively peaceful Eagle River Valley into the more bare-knuckle politics that come with the Front Range, I see a microcosm of the same tensions and behaviors that are fracturing our nation.

One of the main problems is that we have lost our ability to hear one another and acknowledge what Colorado communication researchers Martin Carcasson and Leah Sprain call "competing positive values" an understanding that there are many difficult community situations where "multiple legitimate values point reasonable people in conflicting directions."

One possible solution to our dilemma is a process known as "deliberative democracy," where decisions are reached through the authentic engagement of the community, respectful inclusion of multiple perspectives and consensus building.

Researchers James Fishkin and Robert Luskin identified five core concepts for what deliberative democracy should be:

Informed: Arguments should be supported by reasonably accurate factual claims.

Balanced: Arguments should be met by contrary arguments.

Conscientious: The participants should be willing to talk and listen with civility and respect.

Substantive: Arguments should be considered sincerely on their merits, not on how they are made or who is making them.

Comprehensive: All points of view held by significant portions of the population should receive attention.

This kind of intentional and deliberate communication and decision-making is certainly not without its downsides. It moves our form of democracy closer to the direct model (i.e., we are engaged in decisions directly), rather than the representative model (i.e., we elect others to represent us in making decisions). These processes can be time-consuming, contentious and are certainly inefficient compared to more top-down approaches.

However, given the state in which we currently find ourselves, I'd argue this kind of direct engagement is exactly the kind of work we need to be doing speaking our truths, but also hearing one another.

Sir Winston Churchill said, "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

Indeed.

Jason E. Glass is the superintendent of Eagle County Schools. He can be reached at jason.glass@eagleschools.net.

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Vail Daily column: Authentic community engagement - Vail Daily News

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PORTLAND, Ore. -- For years, a graveled lot directly north of Kenton Park in North Portlands Kenton neighborhood, sat vacant. But on June 5, a work crew arrived on North Argyle Street to begin transforming the empty site, roughly an acre in size, into Kenton Womens Village, a temporary intentional community the likes of which the city has never seen.

A half-dozen neighborhood residents spread across an adjacent southern slope. Some tore out invasive blackberries and other weeds; others used picks and shovels to clear way for a staircase that would connect the lot to Argyle Street.

Related: How the Kenton Women's Village's roots came from a protest in Southeast Portland's Lents neighborhood

Three small bulldozers zipped around the site, delivering piles of dirt and gravel and leveling the packed ground.

Standing in the middle of the lot,MargiDechenne, program manager of the housing transitions program of Catholic Charities of Oregon, watched a truck hauling two small shipping containers pull into the lot. Oh good, she said, the restrooms are here.

Debbie Haskett, a 55-year old-woman who has been homeless for eight years, walked to the far end of the lot where 14 sleeping pods, super-tiny homes approximately 96 square feet each, stood in an oblong semi-circle.

Haskett, one of 14 homeless women chosen to occupy the structures, was deciding where to live. She chose a pod at the far end of the semi-circle that was painted black and turquoise. Turquoise is my birthstone, she said.

She rubbed her hands together at the thought of a home, however small, that she could claim as her own. Im so excited, she said.

Portland has been a leader in the homeless village movement since a group of homeless agitators wrested control of a vacant city-owned property near the Portland International Airport in 2000, cobbled together a cluster of shacks on it, established a system of self-government, and named it Dignity Village.

Dignity Village had antecedents in Seattle and Los Angeles, which it outlived, establishing itself as what appears to be the longest continuously sited community of its kind in the country.

Although the model didnt immediately proliferate in Portland, it persisted. A second group of homeless individuals pitched tents on a prominent Old Town/Chinatown corner in 2011; that settlement, Right 2 Dream Too, recently moved to a parking lot near the Moda Center. A third group launched Hazelnut Grove, to much controversy, in late 2015 in North Portlands Overlook neighborhood.

But Kenton Womens Village, which opened to residents on June 10, is different from these predecessors.

Its physically different. Tucked on expendable lots out of public view, Portlands other villages evolved from tent encampments and share an improvised, homemade look. Kenton Womens Village sits on prime real estate in an established residential community, a tidy collection of clean-lined, sturdy tiny homes designed by 14 different local architecture firms, shepherded by Portland State Universitys Center for Public Interest Design.

Its socially different. Portlands other villages are resolutely self-governed communities; residents make up their own rules and hold one another accountable to them. Residents of Kenton Womens Village will do the same, but within limits that dont apply at other villages. The village is operated by Catholic Charities, which has a contract with Multnomah County to do so. Each resident had to pass a criminal background check, will have an assigned case worker through Catholic Charities, and will agree, as a condition of her residency, to actively work toward moving back into permanent housing. There will be 24-hour security and a full-time, professional village manager.

And its politically different. Dignity Village, Right 2 Dream Too and Hazelnut Grove were founded as acts of civil disobedience. Groups of homeless individuals built settlements on public properties, without permission, in protest of city laws prohibiting public camping. But its creators conceived Kenton Womens Village as a publicly backed, community-supported venture. It is sited on land loaned by the city, funded with city and county dollars, approved by a vote of the Kenton neighborhood association, and designed and built with the help of hundreds of volunteers.

Not coincidentally, Kenton Womens Village is designed to be temporary. Organizers promise to remove the settlement within a year. The sleeping pods will be hauled to another site, if an appropriate one can be found. Catholic Charities aims to help at least seven of the 14 residents find permanent homes, but its possible some will be referred to shelters at the end of the year.

Thats a risk the residents, who would otherwise spend the coming year sleeping in shelters, alleys or in the woods, appear more than happy to take.

Catholic Charities case manager Bernadette Stetz contacted the women to let them know theyd been accepted. Their reactions were crying, screaming, like I feel like I won the lottery, Stetz recalled on June 9, her voice quavering.

Whether one classifies Kenton Womens Village as a mainstreamed homeless village or as a radically reoriented homeless shelter, organizers consider it a model strategy for addressing the citys out-of-control homelessness crisis one that could be replicated in other neighborhoods.

The driving force of the project is the Village Coalition, whose members include residents of Dignity Village, Right 2 Dream Too and Hazelnut Grove. They say villages offer something shelters dont: a secure, reliable place to sleep and store belongings. More than that, villages give residents a sense of self-determination, common purpose and belonging, keys to healing and self-transformation that even transitional and permanent housing options cant often match. Those benefits, coupled with villages relatively low cost of construction and operation, make villages a better public investment than shelters, advocates say if they can be structured, as Kenton Womens Village has been, in a way that appeals to neighbors.

That hopeful idea has attracted a small army of supporters, while eliciting skepticism on various sides.

At one extreme are Portland residents who say that homeless villages, government-backed or not, are public nuisances: unlawful, unsafe, unhygienic and apt to attract criminal behavior that burdens surrounding neighborhoods.

At another extreme are some longtime homeless activists who see the transitional-housing model being attempted at Kenton Womens Village as a watered-down version of first-generation homeless villages: politically palatable but, without homeless residents truly in charge, unlikely to sustain momentum.

In between are policymakers who see villages as a helpful but incomplete model for addressing homelessness, better than some alternatives but not proven effective at moving chronically homeless people 46 percent of whom experience severe mental illness and/or substance abuse disorders, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness into permanent affordable housing or true self-sufficiency.

But regardless of whether they can cure mental illness, make neighborhoods safer or advance the movement for homeless empowerment, many are betting that enclaves modeled after Kenton Womens Village could be a scalable answer to an undeniable and pressing conundrum: With permanent affordable housing in short supply, and mental health and addiction treatment services limited, chronically homeless people must live, sleep and move their lives forward somewhere.

Mayor Wheeler discusses Kenton home pod

This story is part of Giving Ground, an investigative series exploring the rise of the homeless village movement. It is produced by the Open: Housing Journalism Collaborative, a joint project of Open: Housing, Pamplin Media Group and KGW. Look for other stories in this and related series at OpenHousing.net.

Published June 12, 2017

Originally posted here:

The path from Dignity Village to the new Kenton Women's Village - kgw.com

Expect a caregiving environment rich in technology in the not-so-distant future. But along with that, therell be an emphasis on human connection to counter the devastating health effects of social isolation on older people.

In May, NextAvenue marked its fifth anniversary, but not with a look back. Instead, weve been trying to peer into the future for people 50 and older. We wanted learn how everything will change or not: living, learning, work, personal finance, health and now caregiving.

We received help on the caregiving front from three experts who have an eye on trends.

Demographically, well be facing hard realities in the next five to 10 years, says Ken Dychtwald, founder and CEO of the research and consulting firm AgeWave, and a 2016 Next AvenueInfluencer in Aging.

Therell be a handful of profound demographic shifts among them, a boomer generation with fewer children than their parents that will alter our capacity for caregiving, Dychtwald says. That will create great need and demand for alternate solutions.

The hope with the experimentation thats going on [now], is that well come up with better models that dont involve residential care for the disabled elderly in nursing homes, says John Haaga, director of the Division of Social and Behavior Research at the National Institute on Aging.

Technology will play a big role in helping people stay in their homes, says Laura Sands, professor at the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Tech and editor of a new journal, Innovation in Aging, published by the Gerontological Society of America. But well get more nuanced in our use of things like sensors and apps.

What I mean by that is that its not obtrusive. It doesnt violate basic principles of privacy and dignity, Sands says.

Those are the broad strokes. Now heres more on what our experts see as the future of caregiving in the next 5 years, 10 years and beyond:

Apps and online tools for family caregivers will be widely adopted, Sands says. Caregiving has already been inundated with tech gadgets. Whats been missing is a foundation of research and evidence to weed out the schlock from whats truly usable by older adults and their families and will lead to good caregiving or good health outcomes.

That evidence is more available now and tech tools known mostly in the research world will be entering the consumer market, Sands explains. She says: Theres really a lot of opportunity for entrepreneurs to use this evidence-based literature to start thinking about, How can I bring this into a cellphone environment?

Well be feeling the gap between lifespan and healthspan, says Dychtwald. Our health care system has done a pretty good job of keeping people alive longer, but not necessarily alive longer with health, he notes. Pair that with the demographics families with fewer children, families more geographically spread out and more women becoming primary breadwinners as well as having less capacity for the caregiving theyve traditionally done the lions share of and well be forced to redefine our goals, Dychtwald says. Instead of thinking only about how to improve long-term caregiving services and supports, well be looking for ways to prevent more people from needing them.

Well benefit at least a little bit from disease trends that are turning in the right direction, says Haaga. The worst fears about the growth of the population that has dementia and severe disabilities so far havent come true. Those populations are growing, but I think theyre growing slower than most people would have forecast 10 years ago, he notes. The percentage of the population developing Alzheimers disease is going down, Haaga says, but because the population of older adults overall is growing, the absolute number of Alzheimers cases is still on the rise.

Next-generation sensors will support caregivers and older adults who want to continue living at home, Sands says. Therell be better privacy checks to control who gets the information, she explains, and really deep thoughtfulness as to what is the information theyre collecting and why are they collecting it. Instead of gathering a massive amount of ongoing data about all of a persons movements in the house, for example, sensors will use logic checks built into their operating software to collect and store only the movementsthat seem like red flags.

Well get better at designing environments that dont prematurely drive people into dependency, Haaga believes. The universal design elements that make a home more accessible and user-friendly for those with physical limitations are one example of this. But Haaga is talking about community design as well. I predict that in 10 years, there will be no brick sidewalks in the United States. They will have been replaced by exposed aggregate that reduces fall risks, he says. He expects the car-centric suburban model of community planning to give way to plans that are more walkable and livable for nondrivers.

A good death will take priority over prolonging life, says Dychtwald. The social, emotional and financial costs of a stretched caregiving system will prompt us to look hard at our health care systems bias toward prolonging life even when prolonging it isnt what the dying person wants. Im not saying we should shorten peoples dying process unnaturally, thats a slippery slope, Dychtwald says. But many people will welcome a conversation about good deaththe idea of dying in a natural way without a lot of technology hooked up to you, in a comfortable setting, perhaps at home and not having it stretched out longer than nature would have it.

Mapping out highly individualized care pathways will become possible, says Sands. It will involvelayering together three things: 1) a persons genetic makeup and the tendencies that come with it for example, being a good or bad metabolizer of a certain drug; 2) metadata analyses of whole populations and the way specific health interventions tend to lead to certain kinds of outcomes and 3) apersons life and health preferences and goals.

The result will be the ability to predict just how effective a certain treatment will be in a patient and to make a care plan that the person is likely to stick with and benefit from. I think we have that opportunity in the future, but were still a ways off, Sands says, because it takes a lot of communication between technologists and clinicians.

Robots will share in caregiving, Haaga says. Not the high-touch and highly personal aspects of care, he adds, but for some of the physically difficult aspects of care. For example, we wont have to have home health care aides spraining their backs turning people over.

Haaga is also really optimistic about things like self-driving cars to help older adults overcome isolation and get out into the community. Dychtwald, on the other hand, has a different take and wants to see a driver in that car with the older adult.

Were going to have to become more comfortable with interdependence, Dychtwald says. Independence has been our goal for generations, and weve all learned to want our own houses, cars, bedrooms, TVs, phones and tech gadgets. But independence combined with aging creates a lot of isolation, Dychtwald says. In recognition of that problem, more of what we call senior housing, will be intergenerational in the future. Where families are scattered or dont exist, well create intentional communities like the village movement to stay connected, he says.

The thing about the Jetsons is they lived in a world with lots of cool technology, but what we liked was the family, Dychtwald adds. They were together in their bubble car.

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The future of caregiving: 'good deaths' and, of course, robots - MarketWatch

Filming begins in and around Cornish next month for a documentary about the colony of visual and performing artists, the writers and the pioneering conservationists who orbited around Gilded Age sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens late in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Norwich filmmaker Nora Jacobson will direct that weeklong shoot of Land and Legacy of an Art Colony, a project that Etna author and retired musician Fern Meyers said this week she has been mulling over for years.

For most of those years, Meyers has been occupied with, among other tasks, writing three books about the Cornish Colony, overseeing the production of three CDs of music by colony composers, teaching Osher at Dartmouth courses about the colony and directing the summer music series at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. That left her little time to think about how to structure such a project, never mind raise the money and arrange the logistics.

Then last fall, after her final season directing the music series, Meyers recalled, she started thinking with more focus about the interconnections among the artists, such as painter Maxfield Parrish, musicians such as composer Arthur Farwell and conservationists such as Benton MacKaye, the forester who developed the idea of the Appalachian Trail running from Georgia to Maine.

They were idealists, Meyers said. They were progressive thinkers. And they were activists. Given the challenges were facing now in many spheres, especially the challenges facing the environment things like declining songbird populations Im quite concerned at this moment.

This is my way of trying to show why the history of the colony is relevant to today.

The idea of exploring that history intrigues Jacobson, even as she juggles a variety of other projects, including fine-tuning and promotion of her new feature, The Hanji Box.

I had done some shooting for The Vermont Movie, for the story about black Vermonters who fought in the Civil War, Jacobson wrote during an exchange of emails on Thursday. Several had traveled from Huntington, Vt., to join the 54th regiment, which Saint-Gaudens had portrayed in the famous Shaw Memorial. Beyond my acquaintance with the historic site, I am very interested in intentional communities in the case of the Cornish Colony not so intentional because it happened quite organically of artists who come together to work, think, play, talk, live, because they are inspired by each other and seek companionship with one another.

To tell that story, Jacobson and her crew will follow three descendants of Cornish colonists around the historic site and its environs. Veteran actor Jonathan Farwell, whose father, Arthur, was among the leading lights of the day, will lead that delegation.

Rather than a lot of interviews with talking heads, Meyers said, its going to be more of a discovery tour.

During the shoot, Meyers added, Upper Valley residents will be welcome to fill walk-in roles in a re-enactment of a pageant that Saint-Gaudens hosted at Aspet, his home above the Connecticut River, now the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

In addition to the 52-minute documentary, which is designed for broadcast on Vermont and New Hampshire public television, Jacobson will shoot a 12-minute version for visitors to the historic site.

To cover the $140,000 that she expects the project to cost, Meyers estimates that so far shes raised not quite half, including a $25,000 grant from the Byrne Foundation.

Its a daunting task, but Ive had some experience, not only with the music series, but getting a couple of orchestras started. Its worth the effort.

Filming of Land and Legacy of an Art Colony begins in Cornish on July 18. Donations toward its production can be made by check, made out to Meriden Bird Club and mailed to Fern Meyers, 62 King Road, Etna, N.H. 03750. To learn more, including opportunities for walk-on roles in the documentary, email fmsilverwood@gmail.com.

In the category of but-wait-theres-more, go see Norman at the Woodstock Town Hall Theatre this weekend.

Quite aside from the sheer novelty of seeing longtime leading man Richard Gere take on a subtle character role, youll spend two absorbing hours watching a stellar supporting cast orbit around Geres title character, a New York-based fixer struggling to juggle multiple complicated projects and demanding constituencies. In addition to the familiar faces of Steve Buscemi, Dan Stevens and Michael Sheen in key roles, keep an eye out for Charlotte Gainsbourg as a sharp prosecutor and Israeli heartthrob Lior Ashkenazi as a rising politician.

Screenings are scheduled for 7:30 tonight, Saturday night, Sunday night and Monday night. Admission is $7 for members of Pentangle Arts, $8 to $9 for others.

Worried about the health of the Earth and its inhabitants? Tuesday night you can choose from two documentaries on the subject, both in South Royalton.

At 6:30, Building a Local Economy (BALE) and Vermont Interfaith Power and Light co-host a sneak preview of From the Ashes at the BALE Commons. The movie, focusing on the impact of the coal industry on the economy, public health and the climate, comes amid the renewed debate over the viability and sustainability of the fossil fuel industry. Admission is free.

Meanwhile, Vermont Law Schools class on ocean and coastal law will show and discuss Sonic Sea, which looks at the correlation between man-made noise in the oceans and unusual behavior of whales. The movie starts at 7, after which a panel of experts that includes oceanographer Jean-Michel Cousteau will discuss the issues. Admission is free.

The Library Arts Center in Newport continues its series of films from or inspired by the 1960s on Thursday night with a free screening of the 1967 adaptation of Neil Simons romantic comedy Barefoot in the Park, starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. The lights go down at 7, and popcorn is available. Upcoming screenings include The Parent Trap (the one starring Hayley Mills as the twins) on June 30, Dirty Dancing on July 27 and 101 Dalmations on July 21. To learn more, visit libraryartscenter.org.

Next up in its series of classic movies at free admission, Pentangle Arts screens Robert Altmans M*A*S*H on Thursday night at 7:30. Still to come are American Graffiti on July 6, All That Jazz on July 13, Ferris Buellers Day Off on Aug. 3 and Mamma Mia! (with permission to sing along!) on Aug. 10.

David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.

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Filmmakers Examine Links Among Cornish Colony's Idealists - Valley News