How Does This Work?
1. Listen and Connect
Every year, each faith community hosts a series of listening sessions. Themes emerge from the stories shared and members gather to democratically select priorities.
2. Community-Led, Grassroots Research
Research committees interview subject experts and comb through relevant reports. Solutions emerge by looking at best practices in other cities, new proposals from experts, and common sense. Findings are approved by a local board.
3. Direct Action
Based on the example found in Nehemiah 5, our annual Nehemiah Action demonstrates broad public support for proven solutions. From this platform, we seek and obtain commitments and support from local officials.
4. Monitor for Impact
As needed, the organization monitors progress on the issue to ensure desired impact. System-wide changes often require a series of cycles before we can responsibly shift our focus to new priorities.
What is ‘Direct Action’?
[di•rect ac•tion] noun
- Action taken by a group intended to reveal an existing problem, highlight an alternative, or demonstrate a possible solution to a social Issue.
- Action employed by organized groups to obtain results from an employer, government, etc.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the method of direct action…
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?”
You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963
Notice the horizontal line – tolerance for tension. This line is a group’s ability to tolerate being challenged, or to sit with an uncomfortable truth. It’s the ability to ask tough, direct questions and to wait for clear answers. To move past feeling discomfort and hold to purpose. That’s what you can expect to feel at a Nehemiah Action.
Our temptation when we head into “tense” situations is to try to cool things off and be deferential instead of direct. We are tempted to return to the comfort and safety below the threshold of change. We have to resist that temptation because the status quo isn’t comfortable and safe for our neighbors and loved ones who are harmed by the problems we’re trying to address!
The point of negotiation on stage at the Nehemiah Action is to raise us into the productive zone. You know you have enough heat (healthy tension) when our officials go beyond well-rehearsed rhetoric and start making commitments.