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Victory! Now What?

On Fridays, we are posting entries for a weekly blog journey by Angela Williams, our Young Adult Volunteer, of the day-to-day work to organize and create positive social change in her community. We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Angela Williams

This week, Washington Interfaith Network celebrated a win after a three year organizing campaign around closing a homeless shelter in Washington, DC! DC General used to be a hospital. After the hospital closed, the city decided to turn it into transitional family shelter to handle the crisis of family homelessness the city faced over ten years ago. The grounds of DC General are dilapidated. The building has extreme maintenance needs that have gone unaddressed for years. Up until a few years ago, the children living at DC General had no playground or park. The laundry facilities are in disrepair. The food served in the cafeteria is often past its due date and/or moldy. The facility frequently has rats or even raccoons inside! The shelter was not a priority for City Council until 8-year-old Relisha Rudd disappeared from the campus over two years ago. Clearly, this is not a place for any humans to live.

dc generalMayor Muriel Bowser committed to closing DC General and opening up smaller family transitional shelters throughout the city when she took office in January 2015. I have been aware of and involved in this campaign since September 2015. This week, the City Council approved Mayor Bowser’s bill to close DC General and open transitional shelters! The bill has experienced a series of edits and the version approved is different from the original plan Mayor Bowser originally proposed. While the plan may not be perfect, the city has made great strides in actively striving to improve lives of families experiencing homelessness. It’s a victory! Hooray!

So now what?

In organizing, we know that a win only means that we have more work to do. Yes, the bill has been approved by the City Council; however, the work doesn’t stop there.

  • Many of the proposed shelter locations require zoning changes in order for construction to begin.

  • Providing housing for the 250 families currently housed in DC General does nothing to slow the affordable housing crisis happening throughout the city.

  • Sure, the council unanimously approved this plan, but we still have to be proactive about holding them accountable to their actions.

We “won,” but the work is far from over.

In a similar vein, after a year of searching, my home church has just called two associate pastors. Hooray! We will finally have a full staff of called and installed teaching elders after many years of transition.

So now what?

Now comes the process of welcoming these new members of our community. One of the pastors was serving as an interim, so this transition means she can continue the good work that has already begun. She can put more energy into seeing a longer term vision now that she knows she is not leaving when the nominating committee finds someone else. The other pastor is receiving her first call out of seminary and moving to a new place physically and vocationally. Now is the time to lay the groundwork of new relationships, to continue fostering ministries, and to create space for new perspectives.

We’ve ended our pastoral search, but our work is far from over.

Through both of these times of transition, relationships and listening to others is crucial in paving a healthy and functional way forward. Some work is over and should be celebrated! And there is more work to do. God is working through these transitions to continue to create the world as it should be.


AngelaWilliams270Angela Williams is currently walking alongside the good folks at NEXT Church and New York Avenue Presbyterian Church as a Young Adult Volunteer in Washington, D.C., after serving a first YAV year in the Philippines. She finds life in experiencing music, community organizing, cooking any recipe she can find, making friends on the street, and theological discussions that go off the beaten path.