Spirit in Action
John Stedman - Community Organizer for JONAH - Joining Our Neighbors Advancing Hope
John Stedman is a community organizer for JONAH - Joining Our Neighbors Advancing Hope, which is a grandchild of the national organization called Gamaliel, an effort to promote activism from a congregational base. John's journey to activism started with a father working for the UN, life and study in Kenya, alcoholism & fishing, and a daughter who got him back to church.
- Broadcast on:
- 17 Jan 2010
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeak. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be looking at a local manifestation of a national phenomenon, congregational-based community activism. About two years ago, I spoke to the founders of a regional group just taking off in the Chippewa Valley called Jonah, joining our neighbors advancing hope. Now, two years later, they're much further along having pursued projects in several domains like treatment instead of prison, environmental activism, pursuing economic justice, and working for health care. And just a couple of months ago, they hired a community organizer, John Steadman, to help move Jonah's work forward. John Steadman joins me here today in my Eau Claire, Wisconsin studio. John, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Oh, you're quite welcome. I'm delighted to be here. If you've been doing this job now with Jonah, when did you start? Well, there's two ways to answer that. One is I've been on the payroll since the end of November, but I've been doing the work, or at least helping to do the work, since sometime about a year ago. What is the work that you specifically are called to do as this community organizer? What is the official job title? The job title is community organizer, which in some circles carries some sort of emotional baggage, but I view the job as not running around trying to perform all of these services, not being the go-to guy, not running to this meeting, running to that meeting, although I do some of that. I see my role more appropriately as identifying and supporting and agitating in the best sense of the word leaders within our community. And the leaders you're agitating are specifically church religious leaders. Are there people outside of the religious realm who are part of where you're going to? Well, Jonah is a congregation-based affiliation of congregations who would not normally mix across mainline Protestant denominations, but also including other faith traditions. So I'm a communication link in some sense, and we worked very hard to operate at the level of shared values as opposed to getting into the messy ground of things that keep us separate and divided. The first time I spoke on my program with leaders of Jonah was a couple years ago, and it was just getting off the ground at that point. A lot of changes since then. Amongst the things that have happened is there's more congregations, and they've identified a few different committees, foci, if you will, of work that they're doing. What is that work and what's your connection with that work? You're quite right, Jonah is now about two years old. Still very adolescent in terms of organizations and in terms of organizing. About 18 months ago, there was what we call an issues assembly where there were some key areas of concern and agreement among and between the member congregations for action, and there were areas involving treatment instead of prisons, involving economic justice, involving environmental, and involving healthcare. So those are the four broad areas of agreement. We have task forces put together to address and cut much more specific issues in each of those areas. There was a little bit of Bruhaha via the local paper. Someone wrote a letter to the editor kind of thing saying Jonah must be some kind of Marxist organization or it must be part of the liberal overthrow of our country or socialist. There were some terms like that bandied around them afraid. I think rather unfairly in accusing Jonah of partisanship, do you have to be a Democrat to be supportive of Jonah? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, Jonah is a 501(c)(3) corporation and specifically is prohibited from engaging in partisanship. That said, historically congregations are very comfortable in the realm of charity work and being do-gooders and take great pride in serving at the community table, serving at the food pantry, serving at the beacon house, and things of that nature. And all of that is very good work. Jonah is more involved and more interested in affecting change. Not just treating symptoms, but addressing root causes of homelessness and of poverty and of prejudice as it rears its ugly head at the public level. When we're advocating for change at the public level, we're going to cause some ripples, no doubt, because in a sense we're sort of questioning the status quo. So the fact that there are questions being raised about Jonah I think is indicative of what we're about. However, I think we have to be very careful about the language that we employ. You're quite right that you alluded to some sort of emotional terms and labels that are just not at all accurate. I think that the level of discussion and intercourse and the tenor of that debate is very, very critical. And I think we have an opportunity to raise the level that we've been accustomed to and not be angry, not be attack and defend. But again, get back to where are we in basic agreement? Where are we connected as people of faith and communities of faith at a level of values? If we operate from there, I think the controversy goes away. One of the issues that has been going on locally here in Eau Claire has been the desire and need for increased change space for the local jail. And there was a question about where to build a new jail and that whole issue. Jonah was involved in that to some degree, weren't they? And what was Jonah pulling for? Downtown, you know, I'll put the jail out on the periphery or put it downtown? Or the treatment set of prison I think is saying let's look for other ways that don't involve new construction. Actually, Jonah really wasn't involved in the location and/or building and/or relocation issue. Individual members may have been, but as an organization we really weren't. We were and remain interested in treatment alternatives and diversions. What can we do, especially for the non-violent jail populations, that would reduce the need for warehousing, reduce the need for expansion? That's where we're coming from. We have most recently found a great deal of common agreement between the treatment instead of prison's task force and the CJCC, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, which is comprised of judges and corrections and the justice system and sheriffs and DAs and drug court and things like that. And we support them. They want to look at the data. They want to collect the data and look at it critically and see areas where we might make some changes that will, yes, have an effect on the bottom line, so to speak, but also have an effect on the lives of those currently being warehouse, the non-violent prison population specifically, and how that might also affect our greater community. Now again, Jonah is coming at this from a religious spiritual background. It's congregations that are banding together to try and affect the public realm. Certainly, when you talk about dollar bottom line, that's a very clear, easy thing to say. This is $10,000, $15,000. We can name what the bottom line is. When it comes to values, it's really much harder, I think, to find the synthesis of where all of the congregations have the same values. But you're doing that work. How do you come about, how do you get to that place where you have and can name a common value? Because the Jonah group here includes Jews. It includes Unitarians. It includes Quakers, the group I'm part of, Methodists. It's got all over the spectrum. How do you name those common values? And I understand that there's even some hope that the local mosque will become part of the group, that they're working toward that. So, how do you synthesize these together and how do you come up with a single value? Boy, that's the $64,000 question. If you're going to use Jonah as an organization and radical in the same sentence, I think this is an area where you could do that appropriately. Because it's a radical notion, isn't it? Bring together these disparate communities, including, hopefully, the monk community. And so we're talking about a real wide divergence in cultural background and certainly religious background. The basic tool that we use, Mark, is an intentional interview called a one-on-one. It's where you and I might sit down and one of us would be the initiator, so to speak, or the interviewer. And their focus and job would be to really listen with intention to the other person. Not to get to know them better, although that's certainly a side effect or an ancillary benefit. But with the intention of finding out what drives the other person, what are their passions? What makes them angry? What gets them out to that meeting or to that cause or to that action? Those are the things that we try and uncover in the course of a one-on-one interview. Now, if we do those within congregations, it can absolutely transform a congregation. It's a very, very powerful tool. As you start to expand from one congregation out to between congregations, it becomes a way of identifying this mutuality, this overlap of self-interest. And it actually brings together people of faith. It's the most remarkable and powerful thing I've seen ever, ever. I'm so very, very impressed with it as a tool. I think maybe here, John, is a place where it'd be appropriate to talk about what brought about your position as community organizer. There was some funding made available to help spur Jonah along, and that was approved, you were hired, and then there was a knot in the fabric that was being woven. There was some question of whether the funding was going to be withdrawn. Can you identify that controversy? What happened? And I think it's been resolved. This is one of those places, I think, by the way, where we're bringing together disparate people with disparate values. Could you name the controversy and what stage it's at right now? I'm not sure I would use the word controversy, but I'll do my best to identify the issues that were involved. I think, ultimately, we discover that there really wasn't a controversy. It's often the case once people take the time to listen to one another as opposed to try and download their belief system or understanding on someone else. What we do, as you had said, Mark, we get funding from a variety of sources, one of which is the CCHD, Catholic Campaign for Human Development. The Catholic Church and the Council of Bishops of the Catholic Church are intensely and historically extremely active in areas of anti-poverty and social justice. They work from Luke 4, where Jesus is giving his very first sermon and talking about good news, bringing good news to the poor, and bringing sight to the blind and releasing people from oppression. That is at the foundation of the CCHD or the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's desire to fund ecumenical, not just Catholic, but ecumenical efforts in the areas of social justice and anti-poverty. Jonah approached them and secured a grant that required that they hire a community organizer because CCHD, along with other philanthropic concerns, recognized community organizing as an essential tool and means of raising up the people who are less than, and the poor in our community, poor in all regards, in the broadest sense of the word, and the blind in the broadest sense of the word, and raising them up and giving them a voice and changing things at the public level. That is the job of a community organizer is to help bring that about. That's what the CCHD thing is designed to do. Now, there was an issue about healthcare and a perception that Jonah was pro-abortion, and that became a concern of the Catholic community and specifically the granting arm of the Catholic community, the CCHD. So they sort of froze funding, if you will, and it wasn't until we got back to that level of values and agreed with the bishop, who recently moved to Milwaukee, Bishop Lesteki, his staff, and representatives from Jonah and other affiliates, including wisdom and Amos, that we did agree on Luke 4, and we did agree that social justice is what we're about, and we demonstrated that we are not pro-abortion, though we do have members of Jonah that no doubt have very strong views on the subject of abortion, on all sides, at both ends of the spectrum, we do not, as an organization, endorse that. As a matter of fact, we, as an organization, have withdrawn affiliation and support for H-Can, which is a national effort, which does have a very pro-abortion plank in it, and because of that, we said we cannot be formally associated. So we have withdrawn our support and association from H-Can. So we've demonstrated that we don't want to work at the level that divides us. We want to stay at the level that unites us, where we have common interests in social justice and economic justice. With that said, the bishop and the CCHD withdrew any concern, and so they have released the funding, and we are now moving forward with our organizing efforts. Which I guess means, John, that you're getting a paycheck now, because otherwise they were a key part of the financing, I think, for this effort. Again, we're talking to John Steadman. He is community organizer for Jonah, which stands for joining our neighbors advancing hope. It's been active in the Chippewa Valley, where I'm from, for the last two years, and it's moving forward to bring important change to our community. I'm Mark Helps-Meet, your host for this program called Spirit and Action. My home radio station is here in the Chippewa Valley of Wisconsin, W-H-Y-S-L-P-O-Claire, and we're sending it out across the nation. We always welcome your feedback. You can give us that feedback via our website. This is a Northern Spirit radio production. You can go to our website, northernspiritradio.org, and please leave us a comment. We love connecting with you. Back to John Steadman, again, community organizer for Jonah, joining our neighbors advancing hope. And just that name, by the way, John, did that for some people, give it a pro-Obama bias, because it's got the word "hope" in there, right? You know, we're seeking change in hope, and uh-oh, does that mean that we're Democrats? Certainly, that is not a valid reason to see it as, perhaps, pro-Obama, because it uses in common that one word "hope." But for some people, words like "hope" are loaded. If we said, you know, if we were joining our neighbors advancing Christ, well, then some congregations are going to jump on that bandwagon. The answer to your question is, no, it's not a pro-Obama organization. We redate Obama's presidency. However, again, we have to be very careful of the language that we use, and there are some people who view us that way, wish to paint a picture that shows us that way. The reality is that there is no affiliation real or implied between us, in any party, any president, any politician. Let's talk some more about the specifics of your work. Your community organizer, and that's a term, too, that for some people is loaded. They say, "Oh, community organizer, you mean like acorn," which means that you're advancing prostitutes or whatever. I mean, there's some very negative images in some people's minds of what a community organizer does. Can we get down to brass tacks about what you do? You're talking to all the different congregational leaders you're trying to bring together, get people talking. What's a specific outcome that might come from this organizing you're doing? There's a couple of questions embedded in this introduction that you just gave. Community organizing is sort of one of those hot button labels in some circles. If you talk to the conservative public, you'll hear concern and "Oh, that's what Obama was, and that's what acorn and all these things." Again, I urge caution in that and invite people to do their homework, but the relationship between Jonah and acorn is nonexistent. Jonah is an affiliate of a statewide organization called Wisdom, which is an affiliate of a national foundation called Gamaliel. Gamaliel is primarily a training institution. It's been in existence for about 30 years. Gamaliel, as best as we can determine, has been responsible for, at some point in the past, training one acorn individual. That is the extent of the association between Jonah or Wisdom or Gamaliel and acorn. Frankly, acorn has done a lot of good stuff, and they've done some things that were ill-advised and probably pretty stupid. But they have done a lot of good stuff, too. I would be careful about painting with a real broad brush and just being prepared to discard all of the good that may have come from that organization. They have received horrible press, and some of it has been quite deserved. But it's a controversial area when we talk about addressing issues of justice and how to affect change. Now, you asked about what it is specifically, brass tacks, what do I do? Well, Mark, I have lots of conversations with people. It's not the traditional sort of committee model. It's a grassroots, local model. We can't start with a mission statement and then proceed to action. We start with these one-on-one interviews with these intentional discussions with people to find out what's going on. What are you concerned about? What gets your goat? What are you really proud of? Where do you think we can do better? What would you like to change? And the more of those conversations that we have, we find that there are clusters, clusters of concern. Those then become actionable issues. Those then become ways of bringing disparate communities of faith across denominations and across faith traditions together. If they do not, if they do not pass that sort of litmus test, they're not our issues. They won't work for us because we need issues of agreement, not issues that are going to keep us apart. Lord knows we have enough time communicating with one another, sitting down with one another, and this is a great vehicle. This is the most appropriate vehicle for sitting down one another that I can think of. So what I do is I talk to a lot of people, and then I try and connect them. I say, "You know, Mark, I was talking with somebody else. I was talking with Jim over there, and he has that same concern. He's been doing that for four years, and he needs somebody just like you to bring on your radio program because he needs to have a public voice for what he's about. You know, that's the kind of thing that I do. Or if you say, "Gee, it would be nice if we had this or that or the other thing." I say, "Well, would you be prepared to host at your house? Would you be able to bring in three or four people, your neighbors, and I'll bring a couple people and we'll sit down and talk about that and see if we can educate each other and figure out where we can go from here?" So I'm sort of a very local grassroots instigator. I'm trying to bring people together to see that they have agreement and see that they can act together in concert to affect change. And to affect change, we need to stand up, which is what my guest, John Steadman, has been doing and is helping Jonah and the Chippewa Valley do, and that's what John McCutchen is singing about here. Let us tell again the stories of the ones who set this world to play. The ones who wrote tall, great and small. America remembers their names. We saw a world of new horizons. We saw a world of hearts and hands. Each join in the fight. The power and might were gathered from across this land. ♪ To stand up for our family, stand up, stand up, stand up for America's stand up, we got to stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up ♪ We are the ones who answer when America calls our her name. Together we come. United as one. We rise again and again. Oh, we are the ones who labor. We are the ones who care. We are the ones who the daughters and sons. We are the ones who dare to stand up. For our family to stand up. Stand up. Stand up. For America, stand up. We understand. Stand up. Stand up. Stand up. Stand up. America. Stand up. Stand up. [Music] Common feel in the world rising. Common heat a brand new call. It echoes our past and it's coming on fast. Reaching out to one and all. From our parents to our children. All across this mighty land has the future draws near our vision. It's clear side by side and hand in hand. We are going to stand up. For our family to stand up. Stand up. For America, stand up, we're gonna stand up, stand up. For our families stand up, stand up, stand up. For America, stand up, we're gonna stand up. Stand up, got to stand up, stand up, stand up. For America, stand up, got to stand up, stand up. We stand for good jobs, python good wages. We are the ones, stand up. For health and safety, speaking one strong voice. We are the ones, stand up. We are the streamers, we are the law hall. We are the ones, stand up. We are the neighbors, we are the family. We are the ones, stand up. Yes, we are the workers, we are America. We are the ones. We are the future, we are the union. We are the ones, stand up. That was John McCutchen telling us to stand up, and that is the work of my guest, John Stedman, community organizer for Jonah, joining our neighbors, Advancing Hope, a congregational based vehicle for bettering our world. This is Spirit and Action, and I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet of Northern Spirit Radio. Find all of our programs day or night at northernspiritradio.org. Although our shows originate via WHYS LP, Eau Claire Wisconsin, visit our website to find the other stations that also carry this program. Back now to my interview with John Stedman, community organizer for Jonah. John, even though you've talked about some of what you do, I'm not sure that it's completely clear yet. We've got social workers in every city, we've got food banks and Salvation Army, et cetera. So why do we need a community organizer? One of the metaphors that we hear and we employ is this metaphor of pulling people out of the river. Our job as communities of faith is to bring charity. But we pull people out of the river, and we realize after a while of doing that, that people are in the river all the time, and they're drowning, and we're just not successful at pulling everybody out of the river. Doing that work is very important, but there is also this level of going upstream to sort of stretch the metaphor a little bit, going upstream and finding out where they're falling into the river. Who's pushing them into the river, perhaps? What circumstances exist that people find themselves slipping into the river, and then addressing those issues, addressing those factors and those circumstances to see if we can't reduce the number of people in the river? That's what organizing is about. That is what Jonah is about. It's new territory for us. We're sort of Norwegian up here, and we're sort of very private people, and so this is sort of risky territory for us to get out and be vulnerable with someone, to admit that we're young, and this is sort of an experiment for people with pre-ansal thumbs, you know, and this is a social experiment we're involved in. We're trying to figure out how we can better our local community. We're not talking about national stuff so much as we are talking about Chippewa Valley stuff. What can we do here to raise up populations that need to be raised up? It's remarkable stuff, remarkable stuff, and once people start thinking in those terms, you can feel the energy. You can feel shifts in meetings. You can feel people get excited where they haven't been excited. You can see people get motivated in areas that traditionally they've not. It's just great stuff. I love my job. That's great to hear. That's the way it should be, John. Now, you mentioned this is a local effort, and Jonah is about the Chippewa Valley here. That's the local organization. There's a place called MICA, and there's different areas in Wisconsin have this, and then, as you mentioned, it's a statewide organization called Wisdom, and nationally they're all kind of connected with familial. I'm just wondering, do all of these things exist in other states too? Is there an Illinois equivalent of wisdom? Is there a Massachusetts? Is there one in Wyoming? Or is this just Wisconsin? Is this hotbed of congregational organizing? That's a great question. The truth of the matter is that it is not just Wisconsin. However, I think there are similar organizations in, I think, 22 states. I could be wrong about that, but it's in the low 20s. Wisconsin certainly has a long tradition of this, especially starting back quite a number of years ago in Milwaukee and down in the southeastern part of the state. But Illinois has a long history as well, and the headquarters for gomalials in Chicago, I believe. But what's new is this growth of regional affiliates up our way, up in the northern part or middle part of Wisconsin. Jonah is two years old. Amos's, which is in La Crosse, is not that old. I'm hopeful that there will be an affiliate forming in the Wasa area about 100 miles west of here, east of here rather at the end of this month. And so there's growth, but the organizing model is really an urban model. It's an urban inner city model. So a lot of the ways they have of addressing issues, identifying issues and addressing them in actions, doesn't translate cleanly to what we have here in the Chippewa Valley. You know, we've got sort of a town/small city model where 15 miles up the road, you've got another town or small city, and you've got 15 miles of dairy farms in between. So one of my areas of focus is what's a good model for what we have here, our particular circumstance. How are we going to have enough juice going? Enough concern, enough passion to whereby someone who lives 15, 30 miles away is going to come to someplace like Eau Claire or us in Eau Claire going to Chippewa Falls or to Menominee to help with an action. It's different than an urban inner city model. So I'm not sure where I'm headed with that, but I'm kind of dabbling and trying to see what it is. Is it going to be just the issues that hold us together? I think that's possible, but is there something more? I think that's also possible. I just haven't identified it yet. I still want to get a little bit more concrete about Jonah because you mentioned the four task force groups that you're dealing with there. What are the actions they're taking? Certainly they're talking about a lot of things. But what specifically have they done? So just name off the activities. For instance, one thing I've been part of as our representative to Jonah with respect to the friends meeting, the Quaker meeting, we participated in the recycling effort that happens with the summer concert series at Phoenix Park. So we staff that to collect and oversee the recycling, and that's part of one of the actions that flows out of Jonah. So those kind of concrete things. What has Jonah been doing? Not enough is the short cynical answer to your question. But in addition to the recycling efforts, the environmental task force is very focused, quality leadership. They've mastered the art of cutting an issue or an action to the point of specificity where they can do it, know they've done it, and then move on. Getting the local events that you described to go away from there opaque recycling containers and go to clear containers. Just that little change doubled the volume, or more than doubled the volume of recyclable material that was actually deposited in those things. Just a little change like that more than doubled the result. That's phenomenal. They are intending to have the Taste of Eau Claire be a hundred percent zero footprint. Not sure if I'm using the right terminology, but have everything be a hundred percent recyclable or compostable or that sort of thing. No waste. And they have numerous projects sort of in the hopper. In the area of treatment instead of prisons, in November of 2009, they had a public meeting where they publicly affirmed and supported and declared continuing support for the CJCC, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, and their five goals, which I can't remember off the top of my head, but included things in all five areas. Jonah can be helpful from being a communication channel between the CJCC and the general public in terms of trying to scare up funding for some of the CJCC initiatives. Things like support of the specialty court system, the drug court and the mental health court. Jonah is active and has a long, predating the actual formal organization of Jonah support for the drug court. The drug court, no Claire, is a model for success nationally. It's a model for success certainly in the state of Wisconsin. Up the road, other counties have not seen the wisdom of drug court in terms of reduced recidivism, in terms of meaningful changes of behavior, in terms of bottom line benefit to the taxpayer. I mean, the drug court and no Claire started, I believe, in 2004. Since that time, I believe Judge Lisa Stark said that the bottom line savings to the taxpayer were in excess of $2.3 million. Jonah is active in that. We have a seat on the mental health specialty court, which Jonah was instrumental in bringing about based on the success of the drug court, the mental health court is modeled, and Jonah was integral in bringing that about. In areas of economic justice, they have brought about this community days at our local community table, which serves meals to people who are hungry. You know, they don't card you, they don't ask you why, you don't have to qualify for anything in order to receive a meal. And the Jonah folks have recognized this population as one that might benefit from having resource agencies all housed in the same place. So every Tuesday in the afternoon, there are representatives from various state and local agencies. They're ready, willing, and able to answer questions and to provide information about, do I qualify for this sort of assistance or that sort of assistance? Or how do I, in terms of jobs, there's people from workforce development, there's just all kinds of resources there. Jonah was instrumental in getting that idea up and running and participates on a weekly basis. So there's lots of concrete action. Now, we are due to have a, what we call an issues assembly here this spring in March of 2010, and we'll sort of re-survey our congregations. Again, working from the grassroots up, we will see what the issues are today in 2010, as opposed to what they were back in 2008. In terms of concrete action, we haven't done enough, but we have made significant in roads in a lot of areas. With all that stuff going on, how do people connect with it? The website, the phone number, the email address, certainly here for Jonah in this portion of Wisconsin, but there's, of course, wisdom, familial. I'm sure there's other states and listeners that we have who are saying, okay, how do I connect with my organization? Where do they go to? Great question. And I'm, you know, I'm somewhat with my pants down here, Mark. The way I would suggest, at this point in time, would be to go to gomaleil.org as G-A-M-A-L-I-E-L.org. They're the National Foundation. And then if you go, gomaleil, they'll have a slash, and you can go slash, and then put in your state, and you'll get a map of the country, and then you click your state, and you'll go to a state page if there is one, and then you'll have opportunities to go to local affiliates as they exist. That's one route. That's probably the simplest route. And as I said, you kind of caught me with my pants down because I have just recently been trained to create a web, a standalone website, and we've purchased a domain, although it's so recent, I haven't received confirmation that we have it yet. But I'm hopeful that the domain will be jonajustice.org. Our web presences are kick, and we need great improvement there. I want to ask some specific questions about John Steadman, how you got to where you are. You said you love your job, John. You're dealing with all these religious folks. That's not everybody's cup of tea, but somehow it fits for you. What's your religious, spiritual background? Why does this call to you? What is there about this that motivates you and sustains you in this kind of work? I've been around the block, and there are some days that it shows. This may turn into a longer story than we need. But I grew up in New York. My dad worked for the United Nations. He was a career civil servant. So I grew up kind of in a middle-class kind of community, bedroom community, to New York City. He had all of the middle-class values that you might expect from someone who would go to public school. They'd have a fire drill every once in a while, but more often than fire drills, we would have what they called air raid drills. You know, where you got in the middle hall and you put your head between your knees and you prayed to whatever God you had because Russia had launched a split-neck in 1958. And we didn't know what to do about that. And we were run and scared, and we were reactive. And there's all kinds of scare kind of stuff going on in fear and the great red menace and all of this. And so we had that going on publicly, and we had my dad bringing home all these strange-looking people. People had dressed differently than we did and spoke differently and smelled differently and looked differently. And we were in this cultural melting pot at home and in this cultural, crazy, fearful world around us. So I had that sort of, it's kind of a disconnect there. Grew up in a non-denominational Protestant community church. It was very active. It was a youth leader there and felt a home there. When I was 18, we moved to East Africa. And I discovered when we moved to Africa that there was more than one way of looking at the world. I went to the University of Nairobi. Then the University of East Africa/Nairobi/London School of Economics, as they say. And I matriculated there. In the course of doing that, I discovered that the unique, middle-class, white, American perspective was one of many. But it was only one. And it was at the height of the Vietnam War. My draft number was six. I'm a process person. I returned after graduating college to the United States. Did what I needed to do with my draft board and I filed for conscientious objector status because I just couldn't understand why people can kill each other. My draft draft board said, "That's great, but sorry, you're our boy." And they denied that. I appealed it and on appeal they granted me conscientious objector status. I then commenced a sort of very adolescent and very whirl wind kind of experience. Moving around the country, I lived in Hawaii. I lived in Southern California. I lived in South Florida. I was a commercial fisherman in the North Atlantic for many years. I owned my own boat. And I suffered tremendously from a disease called alcoholism. I am 100% alcoholic, although I haven't had a drink in 25 years. And I attribute that to a power greater than myself. I couldn't get sober on it bad. I couldn't stop drinking. And yet I haven't had a drink for almost 25 years. And so, I attribute that to a power greater than myself. And that's got no question. One drink, one smoke, one snore of coke. Sugar slip, hey, I'm mainline drip. Why are you sick and tired of feeling sick and tired? My friend, I know you know what's required when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. Not you get comfortable when one gets to me. You go get tight with all my friends. Yeah, we could laugh all night, but we take too much. And before too long, we start to fighting. And you know something wrong cause when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable when one is to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable. Hey, we love too much, we try to please. But sometimes life brings us to our knees. So we hide the hurt, the way we know. We've got to learn some other way to go close when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Music] So take a cold shower, or make you do a little dance. Well you can call a friend who knows you and give yourself a chance. Or you could grab your partner, yeah go. Hop in the sack, yeah go make crazy love and bounce that monkey off your back. Cause when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable when one gets to me. And a thousand made enough, can not do any day. You've got to get comfortable when one gets to me. Cause you've got to get comfortable. A little musical interlude there with Peter Alsop and his song about addiction called When One Is Too Many. We're talking with John Stedman, community organizer for Jonah, a congregational-based organization here in the Chippewa Valley of Wisconsin connected with a national group called Camellial. Find the link on our website, northernspiritradio.org. John was just talking about his personal journey to community organizing, including his recovery from alcoholism through God's help. Why don't you continue on, John? How did you get from your commercial fisherman work to your role here with Jonah? I moved to northern Wisconsin. My dad had retired, my mom was sick. I sold my boat and moved to northern Wisconsin and bought a little business and got involved in local politics, school board and town board, Wisconsin Council of Children and Families, Wisconsin Council of Churches, statewide Wisconsin Aid Impact Aid Association. I ran for state assembly unsuccessfully. I felt that I had a gift for motivating people and for connecting with people, for articulating issues that needed to be articulated, for raising my hand when somebody said, "Are there any questions there?" And a gift and curse are probably pretty closely linked at times, but that was my experience. While I was in Hayward, my daughter said, "Dad, would you take me to church?" And I had been to church for a long time, and I said, "Absolutely, absolutely." So we went where she wanted to go, which was a Lutheran church. It was a ELCA church. We walked in and it was like smelling bread, cooking, baking. When you walk in a house, you know that. It's a very familiar sensation that you experience, and I said, "I'm home. I've felt this. I've experienced this before." And I have been actively involved in different churches and different denominations since that moment, so I thank my daughter tremendously for that reintroduction. And it wasn't just her at work there, however, she was the vehicle. I moved to the Eau Claire area in 1997. I went to work in retail in Eau Claire, and it was the first time I had had a boss since the days of bagging groceries. I am sort of an entrepreneur, do it yourself. It fit with my drinking career and then owning my own business in Eau Claire, or excuse me, in Hayward. This is the first time I had a boss is when I moved to Eau Claire, and I advanced in retail. I was older and mature, and so I excelled, and I rose to levels of senior management. It was quite successful and was quite into myself. And look at me, aren't I just the cat's meow? Very sort of self-centered, which is certainly the rut cause of alcoholism, as I had discovered, and so having all of these self-centered sort of things, affirmed is not necessarily a healthy thing for me. And again, through some sort of cosmic circumstance, I was laid off in the fall of 2008, was unemployed, although actively looking for work for the whole of 2009. During the course of that year sabbatical, I re-evaluated what was important to me. What I wanted to do when I grew up, the answer to that inquiry was, I wanted to do something to help other people. Back in February, as I had said earlier in our discussion, February of 2009, I had just happened to go to an informational meeting of Jonah. And you know what? I liked the energy. I liked the people that were there. They struck me as being true, what they said rang true. I got that same sense of smelling the baking bread. I'm home. I got that same feeling that I liked this experience. I remember this experience. And so I became active in Jonah. I made a joke that I made the mistake of giving them my email and phone number. And you know what happened? Somebody called me up and invited me to come to a meeting of the treatment instead of prisons, task force meeting. And I said, "Absolutely, I'd be delighted." And I went. And then I got more and more involved. And then I went to national training, sponsored by Gamaliel. And Jonah said, "They're going to pay for that training." And I went, "Holy buckets. You're going to pay for that training for me." And they said, "Yeah, we're going to do that." Because we've identified you as a leader in our community. And we want you to have all these tools that you're of discretion and use. And have you be able to come back and help us? And I said, "Okay." And so I went. And that was a life-changing kind of training. It was just extraordinary training. And if someone has an opportunity to avail themselves of national week-long training, I would heartily recommend it. I came back from that. And you know what? I discovered that there was an organizer position that they were looking to fill. And I said, "Holy smokes, things the planets are starting to line up here." Another one of those great cosmic circumstances. And so I applied for the job. And I interviewed with pool of applicants that was of a high quality. And I was greatly humbled and blown away when I was called up. And they said, "We'd like you to help us. We'd like you to come to work for Jonah and work for justice for people and the Eau Claire and Greater Chippewa Valley community." And I went, "Holy smokes, what a lucky guy I am to be able to do this work and to be involved with an organization like this and with people like this." Talking about Luke 4. Talking about bringing good news to the board. Talking about social justice, it couldn't be better. It just couldn't be better. What a great way to start 2010, doing the job of your dreams. Again, the organization locally is called Jonah. But one way to get to them is start at the national level, gomaleo.org. Follow it down to Wisconsin. Follow it to the Chippewa Valley where you'll find information about Jonah and the site that John Steadman is going to be getting up for us very shortly. Thanks so much, John, for joining us for Spirit in Action. Thanks for your work. Your enthusiasm is palpable. And I just wish you great fruits in the Chippewa Valley. Thank you so much. It's been my great pleasure to be here. And I would invite people to consider being doers of good as opposed to do gutters and to look at their local organization. It's a wonderful way to get involved and to do good work. Thanks again, John. We've been speaking with John Steadman, community organizer with Jonah. Find links on northernspiritradio.org to Jonahjustice.org and to their parent or grandparent gomaleo.org. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪