The following appeal comes from Aaron Scott, Missioner for Community Organizing and Organizer with Chaplains on the Harbor.
Dear friends,
I’m reaching out to ask if you can help us keep the lights on at Chaplains on the Harbor. As we continue to build power with poor and homeless leaders in Grays Harbor County, we’ve been faced with escalating repression and financial strain. We have grown wildly in 2018 and are working overtime to meet our new capacity needs. We are also digging in our heels to support our leaders as they survive worsening conditions in our community – from an uptick in vigilante violence, to new local ordinances criminalizing the poor, deepening poverty, encampment evictions, and targeted retaliation against local leaders who organize in defense of homeless people’s human rights.
Despite all of this, in the past six months alone we’ve attained some of our biggest ambitions as an organization:
- starting Harbor Roots Farm to create local living wage jobs and build local food sovereignty;
- hiring millennials coming off the streets and out of jail into our paid farming apprenticeship;
- launching our Sober Space Station for our members in recovery from meth and opioid use;
- bringing Bishop William J. Barber to Aberdeen to meet with residents of the homeless encampment along the Chehalis River;
- hosting The Most Reverend Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, at our vigil for affordable housing;
- sending our own grassroots leaders to testify at a senate hearing with the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival; and
- teaching about our work alongside Dr. Cornel West in Washington D.C.
In order to keep up this momentum and continue to support our leaders on the ground, we’re asking folks to consider pledging – donating a regular monthly amount to our work. Regularly contributions of $100, $50, and even $10 can make an enormous difference to our projects of survival. If you can’t commit to a monthly pledge but still want to make a one-time donation, you can do so below. And as always, pray for us – we need it!
Solidarity and blessings,
Aaron Scott
Organizer with Chaplains on the Harbor
