Background: Sarah Stiles is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University. She is a strong proponent of social entrepreneurship, and has been active in the Washington, D.C. community. This discussion took place on October 12, 2011 and is part of the Georgetown University response to the White House Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge. Nafees Ahmed, a member of Georgetown College class of 2012, conducted this interview.
How has your personal journey brought you to your work today? Why were you drawn to these particular issues?
My personal journey started very traditionally, conventionally. My mother raised my brothers and me in the Lutheran church. My father said he was a backsliding agnostic or a backsliding atheist and we never really knew what that meant. So my faith journey began with my mother and I am very thankful for that because I got a very good foundation for reading The Bible, going to church and thinking about such things. But when I was a young adult I kind of lost it and didn’t have a church home. When I lived in Boston my mother would ask me if I was going to church and would get very annoyed when I told her no. But it was also a time of exploration. I read about the religions of the world, a lot of Buddhist literature, Karen Armstrong, and learned about Islam. One of my best friends is Buddhist and learned Tibetan Buddhism from her. I began to meditate.
When we moved back to Washington, D.C., where I had studied as an undergraduate, I went back to Foundry Methodist Church on 16th and P. When I was an undergrad at George Washington, I had taken organ lessons there. The pastor at Foundry, Phil Wogaman, turned out to be phenomenal. I just went there a couple of times and realized, this is it—this is the place. Foundry became my Church home. Not only is there the good music but also the thoughtful and challenging intellectual life. Being a downtown D.C. congregation you have the gamut of people from little education to lots of education, so there are many people who are into the intellectual challenge.
How do you think the role of religion can work to combat poverty issues in Washington, D.C.?
Foundry really inspired me because they walk the talk. An intellectual discussion turns into spending a night in a homeless shelter. For many years I spent one night a month at Luther place, which is a homeless shelter for women. I also worked with day laborers to whom Foundry reached out and helped organize. The day laborers used to congregate only a block away from Foundry, so they worked to take care of our neighbors. Foundry helped them come together and form a union that they call the Unión de Trabajadores, the worker’s union.
In my social entrepreneurship class I created a group of Georgetown students and we partnered with Foundry and the day laborers to found a co-op. This is how you make these issues real. We asked, “How do we combat wage theft?” not only in the classroom but also in the real world. Another major issue Foundry has committed to is eradicating chronic homelessness in Washington, D.C. by 2014. That deadline was set back in 2004 by Mayor Williams. I had been teaching a course in the summer called “The Contemporary City” and I had been thinking of this deadline that is approaching.
Washington Interfaith Network (WIN) is an organization you are committed to. It works at the intersection of poverty and interfaith dialogue. It also has a dimension of changing policy. Could you tell me more?
WIN actually has been very effective and I have taken part in some of the major actions with Mayor Fenty who was a friend to WIN. Through his organization, WIN had some major victories. The baseball stadium, for example, was just a dream at first. Mayor Williams pushed ahead when WIN saw that this was going to happen no matter what. WIN negotiated a TIF, Tax Increment Financing. This would mean that the taxes that came from the stadium would go to the community around it, since the stadium cleared away many poor people’s homes. That was a major win. To see that happen, that was real power.
Now, on the other hand, WIN is not in favor with Mayor Grey, the current administration. They have gone back on their promises. They postponed the TIF and in the latest budget they said they were going to get rid of it. Now WIN has lost some of its power. So, I have been a part of major actions and have seen legislation that reflects a caring for the community, but I have also seen that [legislation] taken away.
WIN is in some regards an interfaith lobby, interest group, trying to affect policy and budget. I’ve been with WIN when we attended City Council meetings when they were doing the budget wearing our WIN t-shirts. They can see you there. An affiliated organization, Save our Safety Net (SOS) had a Wilson Building tour last summer. They called it a Reality Tour to visit council member offices and ask them where they came down on the FY 2012 budget. It showed the council that residents really do care about services that may be cut. There were all sorts of people there. Phil Graham was there, a big proponent. Around 200 people were there—it was a mob. We went to visit Kwame Brown, the chairman of the D.C. Council, but he had locked the door to his office. Someone yelled, “He’s locked us out!” I suppose they were worried behind their locked doors. But he came out. He had promised some people that he wasn’t going to raise taxes. He was non-committal. He broke his promise.
On top of working to change policy, I know WIN does a lot of work on the ground rather than pure intellectual interfaith dialogue. Is this what drove you to it?
Yes. WIN is all about eradicating chronic homelessness and creating affordable housing and especially permanent supportive housing. WIN’s two focal issues are housing and jobs. Over the years I have been part of this contingent from Foundry, serving as a representative to WIN.
Now I am involved in meetings to rebuild power since our rapport with the current administration has faltered. There generally is not much diversity at our meetings, which consist of a lot of old, white folks. There are African American churches but not enough, it is weighted toward Northwest Washington, so we have been trying to change that. We now have Jews for Justice and some mosques involved.
This fall we are thinking of building power for housing and jobs. Our task for the next get-together is to bring at least one person who is directly affected by the housing crisis or unemployment, a friend who is going to lose their apartment or job. I invited a bunch of people. At the meeting there were people who were really affected by the current situation. They were of a different class and they offered a different voice. There was a toddler who was crying and banging on things. At first people thought that the child was a distraction and ought to leave. But it showed we need childcare—the child was there because he had no place else to go.
When we talked about housing, the mother of the child piped up at one point and was really interesting. Her way of speaking was completely different, what she had to say, she had never been to a WIN meeting, but she was the real target. She started complaining about the administration and her difficulty in getting Section 8, which is rental-housing assistance. She said she applied for Section 8 housing when she was pregnant and here she was with the child and she still had not heard anything. This is it, I thought, this is the story that needs to be told. In our class, Law and Society, I want students to interview people like her.
The young woman then said something along the lines of “When you were talking about the promises that had been broken and the poor social services in D.C., this is nothing new, this is the story of our lives.” A young man from her shelter, said under his breadth, “knowledge,” as in he had never heard these facts before, “we didn’t know.” We are separated by this gulf of class, which intersects with race. We have not been in the same room before. So you have the do-gooders who are well educated and socially progressive, but they do not interact with the victims of the social structure. This is classic organizing—they have to be in the same room. For the young man to say, “We didn’t know” means we are progressing; there we were getting all the facts. It is shocking how people have been ripped off. Some people have made a lot of money and then you have others who have nothing. That is why your question resonated with me because things ebb and flow and now people across the U.S. are tapping into this anger since it hit the middle class.
The middle class is reacting now and taking to the streets with Occupy Wall Street and now Occupy D.C. But still, there are not a lot of people who know about these poverty issues. How can we make everyone cognizant and move them towards change?
Trainings and teach-ins: learning something with the goal to then go out and enact change. We have to lure people in to hear these facts. Take the young man who said he “didn’t know” for example. What did it take to get him in the room? Well, someone invited him. It is all about relationships—bringing people together.
We can harness people in these current movements with the power of knowledge. Just today I received an email from Occupy D.C. saying they have organized everyday with a training, general meeting, then another training. Trainings are when people can come together with the people you know who are in the park and forge new friendships. Actually, you just made me think of something, I could lead a training, this is what I could do. I have also been trying to bring these issues to our classroom because once people know what the facts are then they will be inspired to go forth. But it is about getting them together. I am trying to think how I could get the students there, on the streets, to movements like Occupy D.C.
Why have Georgetown students not been at the front of these poverty issues? What is your message to the average Hoya?
It is part of the machine that keeps people down because you students are too busy. How can you go and hang out in McPherson Square or Freedom Plaza when you are in midterms? How can you take the time out to get connected with other people? If you let your studies slip then maybe you won’t get into Grad school and that is how you need to get a job to pay off your enormous debts. The system is keeping you here on the Hilltop and not out there shaking things up.
So somehow we need to bring that information to you. (Maybe if it was extra credit to go out). Well, that is a good idea. In our class we have a documentary that is supposed to force people to go out and interview people in D.C. The class on social entrepreneurship I teach in the spring is community-based learning. Students partner with an organization and have to go out and meet [members of that organization].
Last year, however, something went wrong. The students who were meeting with Latino day laborers made the poor men come all the way to Georgetown instead of going to meet them. They got there late because they had to fight traffic; they had to try so hard just to come to Georgetown. These people are poor, they are victims of wage theft, and they had to pile into a little Honda to get here. It had not occurred to the students to meet them at their homes because of their busy schedules. So we need some political awareness and social awareness. Ultimately, it is all about relationship.
Can interfaith dialogue and organizing play a unique role in combating poverty? What are your thoughts on the president’s Interfaith Challenge?
This is a great opportunity. This is a great idea. What I have seen at Washington Interfaith Network has created real change. This is starting to spread everywhere and in every community. At our last meeting, there were three Muslims that represented different mosques, which is something I have never seen before—it was a big step. I think people are beginning to take action. WIN has really made an effort to bring in different faith based organizations, which is where you get this cross-section. We can all be on the same page when it comes to poverty. [Showing WIN meeting information sheets] Here are information sheets on affordable housing for all, information on TIF, and what a bond is. There was also simultaneous translation to Spanish by Pedro Cruz, a grad student at Georgetown Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Of course you cannot freeze anyone out because they do not speak your language.
