“How United Activism Can Help Save New Orleans”

GILLESPIE BREAKFAST PRESENTATION
THE REV. MELANIE MOREL-ENSMINGER
OCTOBER 11, 2008

I want to start by telling you a little about myself. My name is Melanie Morel-Ensminger, I am a 5th-generation New Orleanian, and I serve as the minister of the First UU congregation, which ordained me 15 ½ years ago. Eighteen years, I was administrator of this church, and used to help Jack Gillespie organize and publicize this Breakfast. After ordination I served Unitarian Universalist churches in Ellisville, MS; Chattanooga, TN; Auckland, New Zealand; and most recently, suburban Philadelphia, where I was involved in anti-racism work, same-sex marriage rights, support for inner-city Camden, and rallying for a group of Palestinian-Americans who sought to build their own mosque in the face of bigoted neighborhood opposition. I came home 2 years after Hurricane Katrina, which was to me 2 years late.

The Morel part of my name comes from my father, the late Barney Morel, who at the time of his death in 1991 was retired as the subdistrict director of the United Steelworkers. He had been a union man, specifically Congress of Industrial Organizations, since before World War II. His other activities in New Orleans included serving as the labor representative on the Save Our Schools Committee, set up by Mayor Morrison in 1960 to bridge the issue of Orleans Parish public school desegregation. He was also active in the Urban League, and I guess, needless to say, the Democratic Party, for which he was a delegate at the convention in Atlantic City in 1964. My political life and my idea of strategy begins with my father and the stories he told me about organizing unions and civil rights work in south Louisiana in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.

As a teenager, I organized local boycotts of lettuce, protested the war in Vietnam, organized Moratorium Day at my high school, worked to change the form of government in St. Bernard Parish, and volunteered for Bobby Kennedy for President. As an adult, I protested against nuclear power, served on the board of the local Health Systems Agency, known as a HSA, and worked hard in Dutch Morial’s campaign as the first black mayor of the city.

It was Dutch who gave me my second most important political lesson. In a fight on the HSA, a group of Dutch’s allies on the board met in the Mayor’s Office to seek his help and advice. To our surprise, Dutch got mad. He hollered, he shook his finger. “Don’t ask me to do your politics for you! Line your own ducks up! Do your own politics!” I never forgot that.

At my father’s funeral, my siblings and I were astonished at the diversity of the crowd who attended. There were black and white working men with hard, calloused hands, who told us, over and over, “Your daddy got me my job” or “Your dad saved my job.” And then there were men in sleek expensive suits and shiny cufflinks, clearly of the management and even owner class, who told us, “I respected your father so much” or “I never knew another union rep I trusted as much as your father.” This, too, was a lesson – that it was possible to do good work for justice for working poor people and still be respected and admired by people on the “other side.”

As I said, my father came up through the ranks of the historic “non-skilled” unions, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. Unlike many other union leaders, my father dropped completely the sense of rivalry and turf when the CIO merged with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). “We’re on the same side,” Barney insisted, “The fight is over.”
I think of all these lessons when I see New Orleans progressive organizations reverting to self-destructive and self-defeating “usual and customary ways” of operation. It’s especially discouraging to me when there’s so much work to be done after Katrina.

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I feel downhearted when I see New Orleans progressives dissipating a lot of energy infighting amongst themselves over tactics and turf and over who’s more right or more moral. In my imagination, I see New Orleans’ corrupt elected leaders and the oligarchy that really runs things rubbing their hands together in glee. “Oh goody, they’re fighting each other again.”
•As a white person struggling all the time with my own internalized superiority, I feel embarrassed and frustrated when I hear progressives patronizing the black and white working class and poor, telling other folks what’s good for them, because after all “we’re the experts” and “we know better.” This is no way to be in solidarity with the workers and the poor.
•It drives me bonkers when progressives try to make their case to the public in massive overstatement that only alienate potential allies and supporters. If every single thing done by our political and ideological opponents is the end of the world as we know it, we just become the political equivalent of the Y2K scare. Y’know, y’all, I just don’t believe we’re on the brink of martial law and the mass internment of white leftists.

Before Hurricane Katrina, there were members of my immediate family who were regularly on the outs with each other. One sibling not speaking to another sibling, and vice versa; this one not close to that one; that one feeling like they were adopted. Before the Storm, we could go months without seeing or even speaking on the phone to one another. But after Katrina, every-thing changed. Suddenly, “you were Daddy’s favorite” and “mom liked you best” and some little slight that had been remembered forever all faded into the unimportance they had always really been. We see each other now every month for a regular family dinner, and we usually see each other several times outside of the monthly Morel dinner. We’re closer now than ever – Katrina taught us what’s really important.

My point, and I do have one, is that progressive organizations of the New Orleans area should learn these same lessons. We should minimize differences and unite to work for a better Crescent City. We should learn to play politics with the Big Boys, line our own ducks up, and avoid as much as possible techniques that are both outmoded and self-defeating. I personally am not aware that calling City Council members names ever got one of them to change a vote.

There have to be ways to work for justice for New Orleans’ most oppressed citizens and make the city a better place that still leave us with our self-respect and our principles intact. Certainly, real work that challenges the status quo and seeks to change systems causes conflict – but we progressives ought not, I think, to be the ones throwing the insults, using verbal violence to get our points across. A little humor can go a long way. My friend Vivek Pandit in India once organized a protest of schoolchildren begging for money for the Indian government, which had said they had no money for schools for rural “Untouchable” students. The kids carried signs which said, “Our poor government has no money – please contribute to the government.” Y’know, somehow after that, the government found the money.

We should also remember the way activists were trained at the Highlander Folk School. “The more radical the views you espouse, the more conservative you should dress.” Think of the well-dressed black civil rights protestors, some of whom had also gone to Highlander. If we really want our message to get across to regular folks in the mainstream, then maybe our public persona shouldn’t look quite so outré and bohemian. We don’t have to look like we live on Audubon Place, but we ought to look like folks who have to be taken seriously.

Not since Reconstruction or the Huey Long era has New Orleans been in so much trouble – racially, socially, physically, financially – as we’re in today. The progressive community in New Orleans would be much more powerful and influential if we banded together, found common cause, lined our ducks right and cared how we came across to other people. New Orleans needs us.

“Who am I? Who are you? Where to? What next?”

First Sermon by Consulting Minister the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
for the North Shore UU Society, Lacombe, LA
Sunday, October 12, 2008

I am so honored to be here with you on my first Sunday as your part-time shared consulting minister. Last month, my consulting with your leaders was by phone and by email, advising on worship and membership, and dealing with pastoral care matters. I am delighted with this service to begin my every-other-month preaching with you. Thank you so much for this opportunity to minister with you, and thanks also for the wonderful time and delicious meal at last night’s Circle Supper. If you are not signed up for a Circle Supper, I urge you to do so right away – you are missing out!

As this is our first time worshiping together, introductions are in order. Who am I? Who are you? These are questions always asked of new folks, as Unitarian poet Carl Sandburg relates in his book-length poem “The People, Yes.” “What’s your name, where you come from, stranger? Who are your people?” But these are good questions as well for a new minister serving a new congregation. You’ve learned something about me in the brief bio that was in the newsletter, and in the longer one you heard at the start of this service. As we interact in person, by phone, and by email, please feel free to ask me anything else you want to know about me. In return, the timeline that began with the Meditation this morning will help teach me about this congregation and all of you – and hopefully you too will learn something as we go on and add to it. But we won’t be finished any time soon, for all of us are on the move, growing and changing.

In “The People, Yes,” Sandburg gives a picture of all Americans as perpetual motion machines – always on the move, never completely satisfied, ever looking ahead to the next thing. Even when involved in everyday activities, constantly on the lookout for those “lights beyond the prism of the 5 senses,” for that ineffable something – we don’t know what it is, but we’re sure we’re gonna find it – always asking, “Where to? what next?”

What I like about those questions is that there are different ways they can be interpreted, depending on the inflection of the speaker. They can be eager, anticipatory: “Where to?! what next?!” Or they can be depressed or despairing: “Where to? what next??” They can be frightened or apprehensive: “Where to? what next?” Today, I mean to express all-of-the-above, because ambivalence, mixed feelings, about change is normal.

Those of us in greater New Orleans have had to deal with more than our fair share of change (if there is such a thing!) and many of us feel like we’ve had enough. But it’s not just us – almost everybody dislikes change. Most of us enjoy knowing what we can depend on, and feel good being able to predict things. A few years ago, a church consultant told a conference of UU leaders, “The only person who likes change is a wet baby.”

Change is uncomfortable, even painful, even changes that we yearn for. After escaping from Egypt, wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites complained bitterly to Moses about “the good old days” – when they were slaves! Modern adults get a better job, make more money, and then are surprised by how unhappy they are, even though things are “better.” Children yearn to grow up, insist on being treated older than they really are – and then moan about how hard everything is. At age 10, my son once said to me, “I don’t mind growing up, but why does it have to hurt?” Why indeed?

However painful, change is necessary to growth. In Passages, Gail Sheehy notes, “Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one’s own unnecessary vegetation.” Ouch! It’s unfortunate, but true, that vegetation is the inevitable result of the stubborn or fearful refusal to make necessary changes. Change opens the doors to new growth and maturity – but conflict usually walks in as well.

In UUism, we have seen this happen over and over again. I will use 2 of many possible examples from our history to illustrate how change and conflict go hand in hand. My first example occurred during the late 19th century, as Unitarianism expanded into the Midwest. In the 1880s, the Unitarian societies of Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, western New York and Pennsylvania formed the Western Unitarian Conference. They established as their motto “Freedom, Fellowship, and Character in Religion” – and in so doing, ignited a furious controversy that took 8 years to settle. Other Unitarians were outraged at what the motto left out: no God, no Jesus Christ, no institutional church. “How can we be a religion without God?” they asked. “How can we be Unitarian if we are not Christian?” In effect, they demanded, “Where to? What next?”

You already know how the “Issue in the West” was decided, even if you’ve never heard the story before. Today, Unitarian Universalism is non-creedal, with no doctrinal test for membership. We welcome into our goodly fellowship a wide diversity of faiths to which our experience, our minds, and our hopes bring us. We are held together not by beliefs but by behavior; not by shared creeds, but by shared values.

My 2nd example comes the time when the Unitarians and the Universalists first began cooperative efforts on social reforms during the latter part of the 19th century. Despite the cooperation, there was serious resistance on both sides to a merger. Both were suspicious – would the benefits outweigh the disadvantages? Would each lose a sense of their own special character? The early part of the 20th century found many Unitarians and some Universalists embroiled in the Humanist debate, and the Universalist denomination looked askance at their colleagues, thinking, “Why do we want to get involved with them?” By the 1930s, merger was discussed ad nauseum at each denomination's annual meeting, but little progress was made. In 1953, the Council of Liberal Churches was formed, in which many administrative functions of the 2 were combined, and a year later, the 2 youth groups united. Finally, finally, more than a century after the idea was first proposed, in 1961, the merger was completed, and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations was born. Today we are all UUs with little thought to the labor and even trauma it took to bring the 2 Us together.

As uncomfortable, painful, and full of conflict as it might well be, the North Shore congregation is approaching the time to ask “Where to? What next?” (You might also be asking, “Just how much transition can one church take??”) In a short, too short, period of time, you have faced the physical storm of Hurricane Katrina, the spiritual storm of a minister’s breach of trust, and the financial storm of a too-big mortgage shouldered by too-few members in a time of economic near-panic. You weathered the smaller storm over the resignation of your previous consulting minister. That’s A LOT for any one congregation to deal with, let alone within a compressed period of time.

In this transition year, you have agreed to share ministry with your sister churches of Community Church and First Church in an innovative arrangement so creative that the UUA doesn’t even have any comparables to share with you. I am proud that all 3 of our churches have created this relationship, and I believe that this experience will strengthen all of us.

As you prepare to look ahead to a possible future with a new, more permanent ministry arrangement, you must first come to terms with the past. You must look at what your church has meant in the past before you can peer into the distant future, and faithfully answer those important questions: “Where to? What next?” I invite everyone present to place their Post-Its on the timeline, whether today or later, and I urge you to keep on adding to the timeline as more significant events occur to you. Take time every Sunday to look at the timeline as it grows and becomes more complete; encourage everyone to participate. We can’t possibly know “Where to? What Next?” until we know where we’ve been and why.

Let us walk together on this journey of discovery, being open to what we might find, and looking out for those “lights beyond the prism of the 5 senses” to be our beacons on the way. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!