Days of Prayer and Action: Garden Installation

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Cultivate Affection

Home is more than just a good idea. It's taken me a long time to learn this lesson (if I'm being honest, I'm still learning it). The problem with the way I have spent so much time talking about Home is that I've treated it as if it was... just a good idea. Some nostalgia to hold up on a pedestal. A fairy tale talked about in a world where frogs can't become princes and there's no such thing as the shire. The problem with the way I've talked about Home is that I do believe we live in a world where fairy tales exist, and I do believe that Home is more than just a nostalgic idea. It's a physical place where all that magic is actually born up out of the ashes of actual pain and suffering that exist in life.

One of my favorite authors in the world gave a talk two weeks ago at the Kennedy Center, his name is Wendell Berry. Wendell talked abut two kinds of people he believes make up the world we live in: boomers and stickers. Boomers are the people who bounce from opportunity to opportunity, they maximize their profits and minimize their losses through science. Stickers are people who stay around because they love a place. Wendell says they have affection for it. Love and affection cause us to do certain things that don't make sense to boomers. They cause us to hedge our bets on the goodness of a place, that the goodness will win out over the dry times or the hungry times. 

I think that there are more boomers in the world now than there used to be, and I think the world needs more stickers.

My friend Gaby reminded me a couple of weeks ago that we couldn't just treat home like an idea. She wrote an email to everyone in our office and talked about the actual place where she grew up: Brooklyn, NY. She talked about how, because she loved the place where she was from, she could understand why Abelardo would care for his place; a place she had never been to and would probably never know. Because she understood this love, she could advocate for him to get back to his home.

I think that, if we are going to be advocates for Home, we need to let affection build in us for the places where we are all from. Take time to imagine the place where you are from, take time to do what Gaby did. Cultivate love for your Home. Write down the things about it that comfort you. I'm more convinced than ever that this is the place where we are going to start, and from here we will travel all over a map of people and places who love where they are from, and we will find things in common with them, and we will want to advocate on their behalf.

-Dan

P.S. If you have time, watch this video. You can fast forward through the first ten minutes or so, thats when Mr. Berry starts talking.  

Congressional Call in Day: May 1

First off, give this little video a watch ^

Now that you are all sufficiently pumped, I just wanted to reiterate how much we appreciate all of your voices, and ask that you definitely take time tomorrow to call the office of your representatives and share why you would like to see fumigations stop getting funded (to find the number for your senators, click here; to find the number for your representative click here). Below is a little recap of the points in the video so you can know exactly what to do when you make your call. 

1. Ask to speak to the Foreign Affairs staffer.  He or she will be the person within your representative's office that almost every foreign affairs decision will pass through before it gets turned into actual policy.  It's really important to get this person on board
2. Once you have them on the line, tell them the story of displacement in Colombia.  Share what got you interested in this story in the first place, talk about why the story matters to you and why you think it's in the best interest of the United States to change this policy.
3. Then ask that funding for aerial fumigations be cut from next year's Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill.
4. When you're finished, thank them for their time. 
5. Then we need you to tweet like crazy and get your friends to call too. Say that you just called your reps to help restore home in Colombia, and use the hashtags #endfumigations and #restorehome.

I'm so excited to keep this ball rolling with all of you, let's keep making our voices heard.

Dan 

Sowing Restoration

There is much the earth can teach us, if we would but pause and listen.  Especially now, in the heart of spring, we watch all around us as the world is reborn.  For the past few months, we've been thinking a lot about our work of Restoration in Colombia - where we seek to help displaced families find home again.  We've been trying to think of something to do here, in our neighborhoods and communities, that would image this idea of Restoration to the world around us.  And so, we decided, why not get our hands dirty, till some earth, and sow some seeds.  Literally.  

On Sunday, April 15th, Give Us Names will be partnering with Wangari Gardens  to install a community garden space.  This will be a symbolic act of Restoration, a community here in the U.S. giving a piece of land in honor of those in Colombia who have had their land taken.  The garden is part of this year's "Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia."  Other events will be going on all weekend long in Washington, D.C., including a seminar on Colombia Saturday afternoon and lobby meetings on Capitol Hill on Monday.  To learn more about the weekend and register to attend, visit our event page.

The garden park is located between Kenyon St., Irving St., and Park Place NW.  Volunteers will begin implementing the garden at noon, and we invite any and all to come out and celebrate this occasion with us.

We would like to thank our friends at Ezekiel's Guild in Lynchburg, Va. and Rashid Nuri at Truly Living Well here in Atlanta for advising and assisting.

May something good grow.

A Place to Call Home: Days of Prayer and Action

Earlier this year, we resettled a family from the city slums back out onto farmable land.  This is work of restoration - helping those who have lost their home find it again.  This is the sort of work we want to be about, and our goal is to resettle more families later on this year.  Restoration is half of our mission.

But there's more work to be done.  Welcome to the resistance!

Not only are we seeking to restore home to those who have had it taken from them, we want to stop displacement from happening in the first place.  Our first step is to be a voice to our government on behalf of displaced Colombians.  Our current drug policy in Colombia is forcing many families to abandon their homes and their farms.  We don't think that should be the case, so here's what we're doing about it:

Next month, April 14-16, we will gather in Washington, D.C. to speak to our Members of Congress.  This will be a time when we share with them the story of Abelardo and Olga, of how they were forced to leave their land because of U.S.- funded aerial fumigations.  We will ask that this ineffective eradication program no longer be funded, and that more efficient and humane ways of combating the drug trade will be explored.

We need you to add your voice to the resistance.  If you would like some more details and information on registeration, click the link below.

"A Place to Call Home:  Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia" event detials