Who Are The Powerful? | The Odyssey Online
Start writing a post
Student Life

Who Are The powerful?

If anyone has been divinely endowed with power, it's not our leaders.

19
https://pixabay.com/en/lightning-thunder-lightning-storm-1056419/
WikimediaImages

To meet the powerful, I had to disappear into a dark alley. With little but faith that we were in the right spot, a mentor and I got buzzed into a back building and searched its quiet, empty stairwell and lower rooms before encountering a small amateur team circled around a table in the middle of a large poster-filled room. This was a student representation which would soon speak briefly at the meeting of a larger interfaith justice organization. As we reported and compared stories and tactics from our recent voter mobilization efforts, a young pastor hurried into the room to pick something up from one of several makeshift office spaces dotted around the outer edges of the room.

With a touch of shock, I remembered him from an education equity rally I attended in Harrisburg with the organization over the summer. We'd marched in a massive, loud, prayerful storm up the steps of the capital building as he led us in chants like "This is what theology looks like" and songs demanding hand-grasping like "Wade in the Water," a hymn which began as a slave spiritual and now became an advocacy tool. There, I'd known him only as a being of force, as a person wherein divinity manifested itself in especially high concentrations. Here, he appeared as a man with no more than an old metal desk among others crammed in an upstairs room for an office. Yet certainly his power, impact, and presence remained unchanged.

The throne room of the powerful- of those who, I could believe, may truly have what was once termed the divine right of kings, or God-given authority- was today a grassroots organizing space in an old building behind a church in the heart of one of the most impoverished cities in the nation. And they are the powerful. Perhaps, like the unassuming building in which they are housed, nobody would associate them with sufficiently impactful energy to merit my use of the term "power." But the truth is that they are, unlike the disturbing, status-quo-maintaining official leaders and the corporate owners of the city, creating shocking levels of change proportional to their status.

Once we had joined the official meeting (held, characteristically, in a community space/auditorium/gym on the lower level), this become especially clear as we heard reports from their various campaigns: education justice, economic dignity, healthcare reform, climate justice, and mass incarceration and gun violence. Everyone was busy.

Incidentally, a portion of the meeting led by two rabbis focused specifically on the power of the organization. In discussing the interfaith support and love they'd found following the anti-Semitic violence in Pittsburgh earlier this fall, they recognized that the most profound power in the organization was not in policy but rather in community building. Solidarity is indeed the task of leaders; here, this set of dedicated people filled in where the government, which could deal only in policy and failed in that endeavor, fell short.

Raw community is powerful. And humble grassroots movements focused on solidarity are built with the only kind of true power which could be grounded in the divine.

Report this Content
This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
ross geller
YouTube

As college students, we are all familiar with the horror show that is course registration week. Whether you are an incoming freshman or selecting classes for your last semester, I am certain that you can relate to how traumatic this can be.

1. When course schedules are released and you have a conflict between two required classes.

Bonus points if it is more than two.

Keep Reading...Show less
Student Life

12 Things I Learned my Freshmen Year of College

When your capability of "adulting" is put to the test

2795
friends

Whether you're commuting or dorming, your first year of college is a huge adjustment. The transition from living with parents to being on my own was an experience I couldn't have even imagined- both a good and a bad thing. Here's a personal archive of a few of the things I learned after going away for the first time.

Keep Reading...Show less
Featured

Economic Benefits of Higher Wages

Nobody deserves to be living in poverty.

301915
Illistrated image of people crowded with banners to support a cause
StableDiffusion

Raising the minimum wage to a livable wage would not only benefit workers and their families, it would also have positive impacts on the economy and society. Studies have shown that by increasing the minimum wage, poverty and inequality can be reduced by enabling workers to meet their basic needs and reducing income disparities.

I come from a low-income family. A family, like many others in the United States, which has lived paycheck to paycheck. My family and other families in my community have been trying to make ends meet by living on the minimum wage. We are proof that it doesn't work.

Keep Reading...Show less
blank paper
Allena Tapia

As an English Major in college, I have a lot of writing and especially creative writing pieces that I work on throughout the semester and sometimes, I'll find it hard to get the motivation to type a few pages and the thought process that goes behind it. These are eleven thoughts that I have as a writer while writing my stories.

Keep Reading...Show less
April Ludgate

Every college student knows and understands the struggle of forcing themselves to continue to care about school. Between the piles of homework, the hours of studying and the painfully long lectures, the desire to dropout is something that is constantly weighing on each and every one of us, but the glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel helps to keep us motivated. While we are somehow managing to stay enrolled and (semi) alert, that does not mean that our inner-demons aren't telling us otherwise, and who is better to explain inner-demons than the beloved April Ludgate herself? Because of her dark-spirit and lack of filter, April has successfully been able to describe the emotional roller-coaster that is college on at least 13 different occasions and here they are.

Keep Reading...Show less

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Facebook Comments