"Jesus Saved an Ex-Con"

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Orozco Flores
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Community Renewal ◽  
National Network ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated Persons

This book presents two cases of faith-based community organizing for and among the formerly incarcerated. It examines how the Community Renewal Society, a protestant-founded group, and LA Voice, an affiliate of the Catholic-Jesuit-founded PICO National Network, foster faith-based community organizing for the formerly incarcerated. It conceptualizes the expanding boundaries of democratic inclusion—in order to facilitate the social integration of the formerly incarcerated—as prophetic redemption. It draws from participant observation and semistructured interviews to examine how the Community Renewal Society offered support for the Fighting to Overcome Records and Create Equality (FORCE) project, while LA Voice offered support for the Homeboy Industries–affiliated Homeboys Local Organizing Committee (LOC), both as forms of prophetic redemption. Both FORCE and the Homeboys LOC were led by formerly incarcerated persons, and drew from their parent organizations’ respective religious traditions and community organizing strategies. At the same time, FORCE and Homeboys LOC members drew from displays learned in recovery to participate in community organizing. The result was that prophetic redemption led to an empowering form of social integration, “returning citizenship.”

Prophetic Redemption

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-67
Author(s):  
Edward Orozco Flores
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Gang Members ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Social

This chapter builds upon a gap in the field of criminology by investigating how CRS and LA Voice, as umbrella faith-based community organizing groups, shaped the social integration of former gang members and the formerly incarcerated. CRS and LA Voice’s contrasting religious traditions shaped how they facilitated members’ participation in community organizing. LA Voice leaders drew from Catholic theologies and practices and a relationship-based model of community organizing to foster members’ civic participation. This approach is termed pastoral prophetic redemption. By contrast, CRS leaders drew from the historical Black Protestant church’s theologies and practices and an issue-based model of community organizing to foster members’ civic participation. This approach is termed insurgent prophetic redemption.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Edward Orozco Flores
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
Chicago School Of Sociology ◽  
Post Civil Rights ◽  
Twentieth Century America ◽  
Historical Origins

This chapter presents the concept of prophetic redemption—expanding the boundaries of democratic inclusion to facilitate the social integration of those furthest on the margins—in relation to the formerly incarcerated. It frames the two cases in this book—the Community Renewal Society’s FORCE project and the LA Voice/Homeboy Industries–affiliated Homeboys Local Organizing Committee—as examples of prophetic redemption. It presents the book’s argument: that faith-based community organizing (for and among the formerly incarcerated) fosters pastoral and insurgent displays of prophetic redemption; that personal reform is an essential component of prophetic redemption; and that prophetic redemption produces returning citizenship. It sketches the historical origins and development of prophetic redemption in twentieth-century America in relation to new abolitionism, the Chicago School of sociology, the rise of the punitive state, the rise of Alinsky-style community organizing, and the racial and religious diversification of post-civil-rights community organizing efforts. It ends with a description of the book’s subjects (former gang members and the formerly incarcerated), a summary of how the author built relationships with his subjects, and an overview of the book’s goals and aims.

What Is Black Organizing?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent W. Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
Scholarly Attention

There has been much scholarly attention paid to faith-based community organizing. Such organizing efforts often understand themselves as “broad-based,” drawing support from a range of religious communities, racial groups, and neighborhoods. In doing so, these organizing efforts often elide the specificity of racial and religious difference. This chapter draws on feminist critiques of community organizing traditions to develop a black theological critique—and the beginnings of an alternative approach to community organizing that draws on the longstanding organizing traditions already present in black communities. By bringing together secular and religious traditions of black organizing, and by coupling black organizing with black theological reflection, this chapter shows how black community organizing can move beyond pragmatic appeals that sideline racial and religious identity.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 163-170
Author(s):  
Edward Orozco Flores
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Civic Activism ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated Persons ◽  
Constructing Meaning

This chapter summarizes the main argument of the book and then telescopes out to examine how the two cases of prophetic redemption fit within the broader landscape of contemporary changes in civic activism among the formerly incarcerated. It argues that some are resistant to accept the fact that formerly incarcerated people can engage in civic and political action as a form of social integration. However, it also argues that neoliberal, elite actors are attempting to interpellate formerly incarcerated activists’ efforts for nefarious purposes. It finishes by considering the agency of formerly incarcerated persons in constructing meaning from the postincarceration experience and in using civic activism to make good.

Festival, Identity and Social Integration

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-102
Author(s):  
Kayode Onipede
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Group Relations ◽  
Group Competition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Southwest Nigeria ◽  
Historical Role

This study examines the “historical” role of the New Yam Festival in the social integration of Moba people over time, aiming to supplement the dearth of scholarly work on the festivals that had fostered inter-group relations through cultural identity among the Ekiti-Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria. Using a hybrid historical and anthropological research method, which includes oral interviews, participant observation, photography and video and tape recordings to document and elicit data, the study discusses the political and social interaction of the EkitiYoruba social group through the New Yam Festival. The study reveals that the New Yam Festival is traditionally rooted in kinship culture, and is motivated by social and political integration and enhancement within a socio-political space. The festival demonstrates how ritual can promote and enhance peace, cooperation and stability among the different ethnic groups in Nigeria. It is a long-standing festival that renews and celebrates kinship, identity and social relations, and could be used in significant new initiatives to promote national integration and unity among the diverse ethnic groups, promoting social integration in Nigeria, where inter-group relations have tended to become group competition, even among ethnic groups that have historical ties.

scholarly journals Organizing Skills For Zakat Utilisation Dynamics In Faith-Based Organization

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Sari Viciawati Machdum
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Climate ◽  
Social System ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Organizational Restructuring ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article discusses the implementation of the microfinance program in one of the zakat institutions in Indonesia, Pos Keadilan Peduli Umat (PKPU) as Faith-Based Organization (FBO). Utilization of zakat through microfinance requires the community workers to be able to be adaptive to the dynamics of the existing system within himself, organization, community and the organization environment. The dynamic of the social system in the process of microfinance will provide its challenges, both for change agents and service recipients. Based on a qualitative approach, this study describes the organizing skills that Community workers needed to have in implementing microfinance program. The data were collected through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and literature study. This study illustrates organizing skills --that could help community workers to be more adaptive to organizational and environmental dynamics in the process of microfinance-- are organizational restructuring based on environmental needs and changes, flexible direction to develop a supportive organizational climate, and the development of organizing skills down to the grassroots.

Urban Neoliberal Debt Peonage: Prisoner Reentry, Work, and the New Jim Crow

2021 ◽  
pp. 232949652199157
Author(s):  
Francis B. Prior
Keyword(s):  
Jim Crow ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Prisoner Reentry ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interview Methods ◽  
Debt Collection ◽  
Debt Peonage

In this study, I analyze the experiences of people leaving prison and jail, using the concept of urban neoliberal debt peonage. I define urban neoliberal debt peonage as the push of race-class subjugated (RCS) formerly incarcerated people into the low-wage labor market. I argue that urban neoliberal debt peonage is a social process of economic extraction from and racial control of RCS groups structured by state bureaucracies and corporate employers. I provide evidence for this argument using participant observation and interview methods in a large northeastern U.S. city at an employment-oriented prisoner reentry organization that I call “Afterward.” People came to Afterward seeking employment, but were forwarded to work that was often unstable and unable to support subsistence living. Unstable low-wage work did not alter people’s social and economic situations enough to preclude them from engaging in income-producing criminal activity that comes with the risk of reincarceration. Meanwhile, the criminal justice system extracted money from the formerly incarcerated via debt collection, and corporate employers benefited from neoliberal policies that give them tax breaks for hiring Afterward clients. While not identical, the social process of urban neoliberal debt peonage echoes that of post–Civil War debt peonage and convict leasing.

Community Organizing and Regionalism

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Kleidman
Keyword(s):  
Community Organizing ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Grassroots Organizing ◽  
National Network ◽  
Regional Approach ◽  
Regional Dynamics ◽  
Level I

In 1996, the Gamaliel Foundation, a national network of more than 40 congregation‐based community organizing projects, adopted a regional approach to community organizing, consolidating local projects into metropolitan organizations and addressing regional dynamics of sprawl and socioeconomic polarization. Through participant observation and interviews at metropolitan and national levels, I examine the effects of regionalism on community organizing. I find that a regional approach may help organizers manage longstanding dilemmas of ideology—how to balance broad appeal with sharp analysis—and scale—how to maintain democratic participation while organizing beyond the local level. I look briefly at the effects of grassroots organizing on regionalism, and find that it may give it a more radical and populist thrust.

Making Good through Prophetic Redemption

2018 ◽  
pp. 68-91
Author(s):  
Edward Orozco Flores
Keyword(s):  
Community Organizing ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Gang Members ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Personal Interactions

This chapter examines how former gang members and the formerly incarcerated narrated becoming involved with faith-based community organizing. Respondents’ narratives contrasted their backgrounds in gangs and drugs with their efforts to experience personal reform; they had been in rehabilitation, and made efforts to “give back” to their community, through highly personal interactions—such as mentoring—in order to “make good” and distance themselves from their past. Their personal efforts to make good led them to become involved in a range of civic participation, and provided a bridge to involvement in collective and political action.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document