A Decade at Sojourners

In a week I turn over my first decade at Sojourners Community. It's being said around here that we're in a "time of transition," which seems to me to mean that life is going on as usual. We've been "transitioning" ("tran-sitting?") for as long as I can remember.

Ten years ago I was greeted upon my arrival at Sojourners by 3-year-old Michael Tamialis, wearing red rubber boots (for no apparent reason) and Mickey Mouse sunglasses, proudly displaying a worm he had just discovered in the dirt. The neighborhood was "in transition" then, though Michael didn't know it. All he knew was that his friend, Ofon, from the Sojourners day-care center, was about to lose his home.

A wealthy white couple had bought Ofon's home from real estate speculators, who made a 100 percent profit from their investment and put five families out on the street. Ofon's family decided to fight to keep their home, and we decided to help them.

The day-care center children planted a young tree in the front yard and marched around with signs saying "Let Ofon keep his home," while a few Sojourners members moved in and we all celebrated "neighborhood ownership" of the house. The "trespassing" Sojourners wound up in the D.C. jail. In court, a defense lawyer told the defendants their best defense would be to plead insanity, "since anybody who thinks they can fight real estate speculation in Washington, D.C, is insane."

He was right, in a way. The change in the building across the street was just the beginning of a slow tide that for a decade has displaced people and sent rents in the neighborhood skyrocketing. The neighborhood is still "in transition." But, on the other hand, in the course of 10 years the Southern Columbia Heights Tenants Union we helped to form has established tenants associations in more than 40 buildings and become a force the city has to reckon with.

We have seen some successes and many losses over the years. The losses accelerated during the onslaught of the Reagan regime. Our day-care center was forced to close when the federal government raised the rent on the basement space of a large tenement we were using, and when low-income mothers lost CETA (Comprehensive Employment Training Act) funds and the jobs that went with them.

We watched our neighbors accomplish the impossible, with the encouragement and organizing help of the tenants union. The tenants of one large building on 13th Street together tried to buy their home. The immensity of the task became apparent when one resident said she had to choose one month between paying her small share on the building or buying herself a pair of winter boots.

But they succeeded. They bought the decaying building and lined up a low-interest rehabilitation loan, their success dependent only on receiving Section 8 federal subsidy money. In 1981 they were 12th in line for subsidy money, but Reagan cut the program so severely that only 10 buildings received the funds. In 1982, the program was completely gutted, and they were second in line for nothing. They lost the building.

The woman who had to buy boots came through our emergency food distribution line one Saturday morning, and now, five years later, she helps run it and offers the opening prayer each week. Friendships have grown--but so has the line. Now 800 families and seniors come regularly for food.

THINGS CHANGE. Michael, now my nephew, was recently the center of attention for several days in his junior-high school when he announced that his uncle, the editor of one of the band's favorite independent Christian monthlies, got free tickets to the U2 concert in Washington.

A dozen new children have been born or adopted into our midst. We've celebrated graduations and marriages, been touched by cancer and open-heart surgery. We've prayed together in many places--hospital wards, jail cells, the streets, the White House, the Pentagon. We've all grown up a bit, gained a little insight and lost a little idealism.

Pressure on the city government has finally released money for rehabilitation on the 13th Street building. And though I sometimes curse the jackhammers that start up at 6:30 a.m. outside my window, and the scrap metal that gets thrown down four stories to the ground, I am grateful that in less than a month 43 new low-income apartments will be available in the neighborhood.

Our Sunday worship over the years has been on the move. We began in a Sojourners household but quickly outgrew it. For a while we were in the day-care center, where worship was accompanied by the singing of the center's guinea pigs and the constant rushing of water through the basement pipes. We've worshipped in a borrowed church and in our magazine office building. And now we're holding services in our neighborhood center, hoping to build on deepening ties and friendships in the neighborhood. It's another "time of transition."

Linda DeGraf, a mother of two with another child on the way, shared a reflection in worship last Sunday during our time of testimony. She said that she felt both excitement and a twinge of sadness about the impending birth. There was joy in looking forward to receiving a new life, but also a sense of loss about the changes ahead, about the new family patterns that would, need to develop. She said that birth--like other changes--carried that feeling for her; that each change had been hard to imagine but brought its own particular joy.

Then she shared a story. One evening her two sons, ages 2 and 5, were next to her, feeling the limbs and movement of the as-yet-unborn baby. Before long, the baby started hiccupping, which created in its brothers irrepressible giggles.

As Linda related the pure joy of that moment, she said she had decided that all transitions were a bit like that--with joys and losses and enough hiccups to help us all keep a sense of humor. It sounded to me like wisdom for the next decade.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.