Our Interfaith Origins

 Al Nelson, center, at our first-ever public event: a drumming circle at the August 2010 North Adams Downtown Celebration.

The following reflection began our Board of Directors' retreat today, April 8.

Introduction

Al Bashevkin, who is leading our retreat today, suggested that we being this retreat with a review of our origins as a group. I agree and think this would be both informative and helpful in looking forward.

All this started with the idea of greater cooperation for the common good among people of faith and houses of worship in Northern Berkshire. We did not have a project at the beginning.

The very start was the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition forum of April 9, 2010 -- almost nine years ago to the day. The topic was The Intersection of Faith and the Community. Several local clergy members attended.

During this discussion Al Nelson and I suggested that the local clergy should be doing more to foster interfaith cooperation in the community. Some of the clergy present turned this right back on us. Especially the Rev. Carrie Bail, then of the First Congregational Church of Williamstown, and Rabbi Jeff Goldwasser, then rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams.

“Why don't you do something,” is what they responded, to us as people of faith.

So Al and I decided to hold meetings for what we tentatively called the Northern Berkshire Interfaith Action Initiative. We held monthly meetings at the Eagle Street Room at First Baptist to look for project ideas. We wanted to find something that was needed and wasn't a duplication of effort.

We had a diverse group of people at our meetings: protestants from various denominations, some Catholics, a Muslim, two people into native American spirituality and one or two agnostics. One of our most active participants was rabbi Goldwasser.

We examined a number of possibilities for service and we also considered such activities as an interfaith Thanksgiving celebration. We couldn't agree on anything. But we did manage to have a drumming circle led by Otha Day at the 2010 North Adams Downtown Celebration.

Service possibilities we examined included Big Brothers Big Sisters – still present then in Northern Berkshire – and helping out at Louison House.

Interfaith groups of various kinds can be found all over the country. They do everything from conducting interfaith discussions between Jews and Muslims in cities such as Chicago to running service projects and agencies all over. One such group can be found in nearby Bennington, Vermont.

A large part of my interest in interfaith work came from my experience with the interfaith group in Bennington, Vermont. The Interfaith Council and its service arm, Greater Bennington Interfaith Community Services Inc. (GBICS) is a group of both laypeople and clergy.

It has a part-time executive director and runs the Kitchen Cupboard Food Pantry, which started just a few months before we started one; a free medical clinic and a fuel fund. Among other things, members of this interfaith group meet regularly and submit columns about faith weekly to the Bennington Banner.

The Friendship Center

In late 2010, it became apparent that the Berkshire Community Action Council (BCAC) would no longer be able to run its food pantry in North Adams because of space. The consensus then was that there were not enough places offering emergency food in North Adams in particular.

Around the same time, our friend Lois Daunis had mentioned to us the possibility of using space she and her husband owned at 43 Eagle Street for a headquarters for our interfaith group. Soon, the idea of using that space to store the BCAC food or perhaps operating a food pantry was also in the air.

Well, needless to say: We had found our project. We worked with Lois and Mike and with BCAC and the Food Bank and Kim McMann of Target Hunger and got a crash course in running a food pantry. We modeled a lot of what we do from our visits to the Charity Center in Adams. Later, we visited the Kitchen Cupboard in Bennington.

We opened the Friendship Center in February 2011 at 43 Eagle St. The name was inspired by the name Charity Center. In our case the goal was to go one step beyond and offer friendship.

The emphasis of all of the early founders was to treat people with dignity and respect – as friends. This is why we don't use the word “clients.” Happily, this spirit and attitude has stuck.

We are not social workers – we are an all-volunteer organization of people motivated by the best traditions of faith and/or humanistic concern.

And that's an important point, which has evolved into our working mission statement: “The NBIAI is a group of people of different faiths and denominations working together with others of goodwill to serve the community.”

So far, it's a formula that works. And it also doesn't limit us to just a food pantry. Yes, that's our main task by far. But over the years we have broadened this to offering all manner of social services, including a nurse, at our sign-in point at the Eagle Street Room. We also offer books, diapers, personal care items and free rides home.

Love is creative. And there's a lot of love in what we do.

Other activities over the years

It's worth briefly mentioning that we picked up the ministry voucher system from the now-defunct Williamstown Ecumenical Association shortly after we opened the food pantry. This was introduced to us through one of our monthly public meetings that continued for years after the Friendship Center opened.

Those monthly public meetings provided an opportunity for faith sharing, idea sharing, telling folks about out work at the Friendship Center and learning about other programs. Presenters over the years at these meetings included Habitat for Humanity, the Fresh Air Fund, Western Mass. Legal Services, Berkshire County Jail Rehabilitation Services, and Berkshire Health Systems and many more. After Newtown we had a meeting on violence at which we decided to send letters to the media and Congress voicing our concern for gun safety legislation.

For two years after a presentation by the National Alliance on Mental Illness Berkshire County, we presented – with the help of the Rev. Kim Kie one year and the Rev. Dan Randall the next – an interfaith service for mental illness survivors and their families. The first one was particularly well-attended and attracted people from all over the county.

From the beginning we have had a blogspot blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Now, thanks mostly to Fran, we have a website, too. For several years, with early volunteers Mark Lincourt and Corinne Case, we also ran a public access TV show called “In The Company of Friends.”

Conclusion

Our crown jewel is of course the work of what we now call Al Nelson Friendship Center, which most of us refer to simply as the “food pantry.” And we can be justly proud of it. It is considered a model program by the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. Its volunteers over the years are the finest group of people, by far, I have ever been associated with.

But I'd like to draw on this backstory about our origins for a couple of concluding points. I see benefits now, as I did when Al and I worked to incorporate us, to being an interfaith group that runs a food pantry.

One is to keep alive the idea of people of different faiths and those of none working together in an intentional way to serve the community. We provide a social service but with a difference.

Defining ourselves as an interfaith group also makes it less of a leap to add programming – if it makes sense. Food pantries are usually adjuncts of larger groups – churches, community action councils etc. – and having an interfaith identity associates us with a venerable movement that takes many forms in the United States today.

Finally, in this time of division and scapegoating, what could be more important than bringing people with different perspectives about politics and religion together in voluntary service to the poor? Service that is friendly, respectful and given enthusiastically?

I would offer that how we do what we do is as important as what we do. We should think big, but in any case we should keep the eye on the ball: serving our local friends with dignity, respect and friendship in the best traditions of faith and humanism.

Thank you!

On the Road to Boston with BIO

                                                                  The State House in Boston

                          Learning, empowerment and prayer

Contents: Why we went; A rich experience; First food victory; Food and Jobs: Mass. Food Trust; The opening of the photo exhibit; Poverty in Massachusetts; Circle of prayer

On Wednesday, Sept. 15, two vans filled with Berkshire County people travelled to Boston under the aegis of Berkshire Interfaith Organizing (BIO).

The first purpose was to attend an opening for “Take Another Look: A Photographic Essay on Food Insecurity” by Nicholas DeCandia, a Berkshire County photographer. It is now on display in Doric Hall at the State House in Boston, where we saw it. All tours of the State House begin and end in this hall, we were told.

This exhibit of 30-photos shows the volunteers and guests of the meals program and food pantry of South Congregational Church in Pittsfield. “For people in Boston to see that we have hunger in the Berkshires will help them see it’s everywhere,” Rev. Joel Huntington, pastor of South Congregational and a BIO leader, told the Berkshire Eagle.

As BIO lead organizer Wendy Krom said as she helped drive us down to Boston, paraphrased: We need to show folks down there that the Berkshires is more than just Tanglewood and second-home owners.

The Northern Berkshire Interfaith Action Initiative (NBIAI) joined BIO in July, becoming its first organizational, non-congregational member. So on one of those vans were five people who in one way or another have been connected with NBIAI’s Friendship Center Food Pantry as volunteers.

The others were from Adams and points south in Berkshire County. Many were clergy and lay leaders of BIO. Others, like me, were delegates to BIO and participants in its food insecurity task force.

We walk down Beacon Street to the Congregational Building, where the MPHA offices are located.

                                              A rich experience

In addition to attending the opening at the State House, the trip had other purposes. One unspoken purpose was to familiarize us with the Massachusetts Legislature and more in our state capital.

I am a native of Massachusetts and was editor of a weekly newspaper in Northern Berkshire for nine years and had never visited the State House until this week. It was not part of my education up to 10^th grade in North Adams public schools (my family moved out of state when I was 15).

Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli, D-Lenox, gave us a heartfelt tour of the House Chamber. He mentioned how happy he was to see people from Berkshire County, as lots of us don’t make our way down there. He noted how Berkshire schools don’t take trips to Boston, unlike public schools a lot closer to Boston, because it’s a whole-day thing for us and expensive.

We need to become a lot more familiar with the State House. There will no doubt be more of these trips, and I hope more of the NBIAI/Friendship Center team will experience it. Even an old boy like me found the visit enlightening, inspiring and empowering.

                          

                                            First food victory

Another reason we went to Boston was to offer thanks for the $2 million increase in funding in the budget for the Massachusetts Emergency Food Program (MEFAP). The two legislators we interacted with were Pignatelli and State Sen. Ben Downing, D-Pittsfield, who spoke at the opening and gave us a tour of the Senate chambers. (We had group photos taken in both legislative chambers).

                                  Food and Jobs: Mass. Food Trust

Andrea Freeman, field director, and Rebekah Gewirtz, executive director, of the Massachusetts Public Health Association

Another reason we went to Boston was to learn about and advocate for the Massachusetts Food Trust program, which the state legislature created and Gov. Deval Patrick signed into law in 2014 but which has not been funded.

Modeled on similar initiatives in other states such as New York, Pennsylvania and California, this program would provide loans, grants and technical assistance to support new and expanded healthy food retailers and food enterprises in areas that need them most.

I did not know this until recently, but Massachusetts is 47 of the 50 states in access to grocery stores. Although North Adams has three grocery stores, we are still part of an area of the state considered a “food desert.”

The Food Trust is about more than just more and expanded grocery stores, however. It might also provide funding farmer’s markets, mobile markets, community kitchens, food truck commissaries, greenhouses, food distribution hubs and more, projects that would create jobs in low or moderate income communities.

We have the opportunity here in Berkshire/Northern Berkshire, as I and others see it, for a mobile food pantry, a centralized food hub capable of storing food, and possibly even a new farm providing employment.

A chief advocate for the Massachusetts Food Trust is the Massachusetts Public HealthAssociation (MPHA), which served as home base for us during our visit. It is located on the seventh floor of a building on Beacon Street within sight of the State House. They were great hosts.

Their goal is to get $10 million in seed funding for the Mass. Food Trust. For the 2016 fiscal year, MPHA seeks $2.5 million in the state budget. They are also seeking the release of the $2 million in bond funds dedicated to the Food Trust.

I am hoping that BIO will be conducting more trips to Boston for some hands-on lobbying. It is an empowering experience.

                                       The opening of the photo exhibit

 The Rev. Joel Huntington at the State House

The Rev. Joel Huntington was the first to speak “Take Another Look: A Photographic Essay on Food Insecurity.” All the photos were taken at South Congregational Church, south of Park Square on Route 7 in Pittsfield. They have a huge food operation, serving about 450 families a week at the food pantry and another 60 to 80 people with meals once a week.

By comparison, the Friendship Center Food Pantry serves between 150 and 200 families per week. The Berkshire Food Project probably serves even more meals per week with its program Mondays through Friday.

Huntington noted that while this is the largest food pantry in Pittsfield, it’s not the only one. “There’s a lot of poverty” in that city of about 42,000, he said. “So what do we make if it?”


“Jesus once said, ‘The poor you will have with you always, and people often just stop there. And say, ‘Okay, therefore, there’s nothing we can do, nothing we need to do, it’s a form resignation or even justification…

“But Jesus knew by heart the rest of the quote. He was quoting the book of Deuteronomy; the Hebrew Bible was his Bible. The rest of the quote is: ‘The poor you will have with you always, therefore open your hands to the poor, open your hearts to the poor, open your eyes to the poor, not just for their sake but for your own sake so that we can all be whole.” That’s what Jesus knew and that’s what he wanted and that’s what we’re supposed to embody in our faith.”


To the question of how do we do that, he told the story of Gretchen DeBartolo who worked next door to the church for years and recently started volunteering for its meals program. She found her involvement very rewarding and spoke to DeCandia about doing a photo project.

Sam Smith of Williamstown at "Take Another Look." Below, Lauryn Levesque and Gretchen DeBartolo at the exhibit.

Paula Morey, of Pittsfield, who is a member of the BIO food insecurity team and is a first cousin of mine, spoke about the work of BIO, including the success in raising MEFAP funding.

“Our next priority is to support funding for the Massachusetts Food Trust,” she said. “We believe that if it’s funded appropriately, it will create opportunities for good jobs, increase access to healthy food and revitalization of our communities.”

Downing said the exhibit was a way to educate other legislators of poverty and need in Berkshire County. “Thank you for the work that you all are doing,” he said to the Berkshire visitors, “the advocacy work that you are doing, the service work that you all are doing. Thank you for the examples you provide in our communities.

“It’s easy to think that these problems are too big…but it’s important to remember that the work of an individual has ripple effects far greater than anything that we see,” he said. “I know that I am hopeful because of all the work that you all do.”

Sen. Ben Downing shows us the Senate Chamber, which we learned is under the golden dome of the State House.  Below, Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli shows us the Massachusetts House Chamber, while we sit at the wooden desks of representatives. 

                                            Poverty in Massachusetts

State Auditor Suzanne Bump, who is from Great Barrington, also addressed us and made a point I had not before considered. First, she spoke of the moral imperative to serve the poor among us, and I found charming her story that she knew her future husband was right for her because he was actively involved in serving the poor when she met him.

“On a per capita basis we have a larger income than most other states in the nation,” Bump said. But digging down in the figures “you see that most of that wealth is concentrated in just a couple of counties here in Massachusetts, and even within those counties, Suffolk County, Middlesex County, there is food insecurity.

"But those counties skew the figures for Massachusetts, because once we move off those couple of counties, then you see that [the average of family] income in the rest of Massachusetts is far below the statewide average, you’re also below the national average in terms of family income.”

On this point, the photo exhibit included some charts and graphs. One of them was titled “Families in Berkshire County need up to $86,000 to attain a secure yet modest living.”

Even for one parent and one child, the amount is $53,527. These figures for 2013 from the Economy Policy Institute ring true to me.  

Circle of prayer

We ended our visit with lunches we brought sitting on Boston Common within view of the State House. We each shared what we got from our visit. My main conclusion is that while democracy may be endangered at the national level, it is still alive in Massachusetts and the visit was very empowering. Another member of our group illustrated with food on hand how little one can buy for a family on $25 of SNAP (food stamp) benefits.

We ended our lunch holding hands in a circle, as Rev. Huntington led us in a prayer, no doubt showing the other people in the Common that faith, too, is still alive in Massachusetts.

                                        Our place on the Common before leaving Boston.