Chaplains on the Harbor: Advent Appeal

From Aaron Scott, Chaplain and Organizer at Chaplains on the Harbor:

Dear friends and family,

“God has brought the rulers down from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble!”

In the midst of an eviction avalanche and with COVID surging on, we are working hard to stay grounded in the revolutionary hope of Mary’s song this Advent: that the hungry will be filled with good things to eat.

A bright light over these past few months has been the opportunity to break our isolation and connect with others in the same struggles. Rev. Sarah has just returned from her much-needed sabbatical in Iceland, Ireland, and France. The rest of our team recently returned from a week in Mississippi with the Poor People’s Campaign! We learned Civil Rights Movement history firsthand from people who lived it, as well as connecting with grassroots leaders who are carrying the fight forward today for (and as) poor, homeless, and incarcerated people. We were so honored to take this journey, and to learn from people who have so much to teach.

We had the once-in-a-lifetime honor of meeting Medgar Evers’s daughter, Ms. Reena Evers, at their family home. We also spent a day at the NAACP headquarters learning about Mississippi Civil Rights history and touring Medgar Evers’s office. We did evening street outreach with the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign in downtown Jackson, visited the Chahta Immi Cultural Center of the Mississippi Band Choctaw, and caravanned up through the Delta to the site of Bryant’s Grocery, where fourteen year old Emmett Till was first marked for kidnapping and murder. We also passed Parchman Prison, the blueprint for convict labor in this country. We were so grateful to be on this journey with some of the staunchest, most skilled and veteran leaders in the fight against this repression. Coming back home, the connections to our local work – both the plight, and the fight – have been impossible to ignore. From street and jail outreach, to projects of survival, to supportive employment, to base-building and human rights organizing locally and with the Poor People’s Campaign nationally, this journey reminded us that we are never alone in the work we do. At the darkest time of year, in a particularly bleak year for so many, the warmth of solidarity from the bottom up – from Jackson, Mississippi to Dublin, Ireland to Aberdeen, Washington – provides us with the hope of Mary meeting Elizabeth.

We couldn’t do any of this without the support of each and every one of you. Thank you for making our work possible every single day! We are so grateful.

Many blessings!
The Chaplains on the Harbor Team

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