RE-THINK – CPCA Rally for National Day of Prayer

Welcome back to RE-THINK, a blog where our staff members will be sharing their thoughts and experiences working at the Br. David Darst Center. Today's post is from our Program Director, Rachel Lyons. In her post, she reflects on her experiences as the Darst Center took part in the recent CPCA Rally for the National Day of Prayer. 

 “When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Our bodies are pretty astonishing, aren’t they? Sometimes fragile, sometimes strong. Resilient and tender and brittle. Weak and flexible. Quietly alert. Loudly buzzing. Our bodies teach us when we listen, when we take to heart the amazing wisdom of millions of cells working together to flourish, to keep us alive, to keep us moving. Here at the Darst Center, I think about all the movement that happens during retreats and programs. We move from packing food bags at St. James to walking with Taller de Jose and learning about immigration to reading with students at San Miguel School to cooking a meal together and finally reflecting and resting. We put our faith, our love, our tenderness into action in so many movements. And our bodies carry us. And our bodies pray. Our bodies pray us into inner movements, inner transformations, inner connections.

This month on May 3, we celebrated the National Day of Prayer. Our staff took to heart the call to pray with our legs as we marched for reform of the police contracts with the Coalition for Police Contracts Accountability (CPCA). Alongside partner agencies and friends that included the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation (SOUL), we prayed that the Chicago Police Department would be accountable to our communities and our families as they negotiate union contracts in the coming months. CPCA is composed of community, policy, and civil rights organizations taking action to ensure police accountability in Chicago. The coalition has called on the mayor and city council to ensure that contract provisions enabling the code of silence will be brought to an end by adopting a set of recommendations outlined here. The power of our message that day was rooted in prayer that called those in power to make the right decisions for the community and those most impacted by police misconduct.

As we stood outside the Chicago Police Department building at 35th and Michigan, we heard incredible words and testimonies from faith leaders of various traditions and from community members who have experienced direct harm from police misconduct. One faith leader, Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann, said, “We are not here today to say that we are any better than anyone in that building. I know most of the time I do right, but when I do wrong, my organization, my coworkers, my community, hold me accountable. We investigate, we seek all the information to understand what happened. Not to vilify or to shame anyone...but because the system is only as good as the individuals in it, and individuals need oversight and accountability to do our best work.  And I believe everyone in our hearts wants to do our best work, to make teshuvah– to be set right, not just with God, but with the people, the families, the children, we have hurt.”

We wrapped up the event with a rousing call to action from Tanya Watkins, Executive Director of SOUL, who proclaimed, “Today, we have heard the cries of the people. Today, we have received word from our faith leaders. Today, we move forward in our power to ensure that police serve our communities and not their interest. […] We stand in unity and pledge that we will not stop until every member of Chicago’s City Council commits to ensuring that CPCA’s 14 recommendations are negotiated into the police union contracts. We need you to join and get your alderman to sign on. We will commit to putting continued pressure on the FOP until they hear our demands. We pledge that we will educate and mobilize our communities around this issue and we will put our bodies on the line until justice is served. So it is demanded, so let it be done. We have been honored to stand in faith with you this morning. And as people of faith we say Ashe, we say Amen.”

We will continue to use our legs, our arms, our hearts, our bodies to pray us into inner and outer transformations and connections that make way for justice to shine forth.