|
The Episcopal Networks Collaborative (ENC) continues its joint education program with a webinar on rural and small town poverty. ENC is a partnership involving the Episcopal Network for Economic Justice, Episcopal Ecological Network and the Union of Black Episcopalians. The presenters for this webinar are the Rev. Sarah Monroe and Aaron Scott and it is scheduled for 6 p.m. CST on Thursday, April 23.
Poverty in smaller communities recently has come to public awareness through events in Ferguson, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb of 21,000 people. "In the wake of police killing of Michael Brown and national protests the US Department of Justice has released a report detailing a complex system of debtors prison, excessive fines and the targeting of black residents," says Monroe. Monroe, supported by an Episcopal Church Advocacy fellowship is a priest and Missioner at Chaplains on the Harbor, seeking to affirm the dignity of people living in rural Gray's Harbor County in Washington State and working to build a movement to end poverty led by the poor. Scott is a poverty scholar with a degree in New Testament Studies. She serves as a community organizer and catechist in the same community.
"Ferguson, Missouri is America", says Monroe. "In this webinar we will look at the growing poverty of small town and rural America, the causes of that poverty, its increasing criminalization, the roots of intraclass racism, and finally, at the growing resistance among the poor themselves to build a movement to end poverty. I will reflect on my work as a priest and missioner in small town rural America and offer resources for those doing the same."
Register for the webinar here.
|