Cohort III Student Earns AmeriCorps Ideals Scholarship

Jessica Lewis, a Cohort III Student, was recently the recipient of an AmeriCorps Ideals Scholarship. Jess is an AmeriCorps*VISTA at the YWCA of Missoula, where she works directly with the GUTS! (Girls Using Their Strengths!) program focusing on girl empowerment. Jess wrote an essay to win the scholarship, and she was kind enough to share. Congratulations Jess!

Adlai Stevenson wrote, “It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.” In your experience, how do staff and/or volunteers of your organization live according to the principles of the organization? How well do the ideals of your service site and its mission translate into everyday living?

Living up to principles is like walking a mountain ridge, some days you are a little more balanced than others. Sometimes you have to double back around an obstacle in order to move forward. It requires a constant consciousness and awareness of where you are and what your doing- of how each step affects your balance and how it will affect the course of steps to come. At the YWCA the ridge we walk seems often to be an uphill climb as we tread steadily toward the twin goals of the elimination of racism and the empowerment of women. For the organization as a whole, as well as for the staff and volunteers who execute it’s mission daily, looking ahead at how far we have to climb can be daunting and discouraging. However, looking behind at how far we have come, at the lives and legacies of those who made it possible for us to have come as far as we have, is hopeful and helpful in regaining balance and continuing to climb, step by mindful step.

The ideals of the YWCA, eliminating racism and empowering women, the principle of equality, can seem lofty. It is tempting to look to grand figures and preeminent presences, saints like Theresa and martyrs like Martin, as those who effect real change in moving institutional mountains like racism and poverty. I’m guilty of viewing myself, on occasion, to be a woman less capable of combating sexism than Sojourner Truth or Virginia Woolf, or in possession of a weaker voice in speaking as an ally of the LGBT community than Coretta Scott King. In these moments I step off course, undermine my own potential, and fail to take responsibility for opposing systems of oppression. In these moments I need to remember that Virginia Woolf doesn’t live in Missoula; I do. It is my responsibility to translate the goals of eliminating racism and empowering women into my daily life and my community. In this endeavor I have the help and support of an amazing organization and the encouragement of a dedicated team of staff and volunteers.

To personalize and ground organizational goals in the reality of daily life, we open our weekly YWCA staff meeting with a reading selected by a staff member. The topic of the reading is racism, sexism or homophobia and is often a piece of news or section of a poem or prose of local authorship or significance. Following the reading we break into small groups and discuss our thoughts and reactions, as well as instances demonstrating the presence of racism, sexism, or homophobia in our lives and community. I have grown tremendously from the honesty with which my colleagues share their stories.

The topic this Wednesday was racism. I sat back in my chair and looked a around the room at the faces of the YWCA staff while Caitlin read a poem by Chrystos, a Native American lesbian poet from Seattle. She describes watching White children playing on their family’s private beach- how, though they are children, she cannot celebrate their joy as they shriek and run around on ground that was taken and is kept from her. How there is a fragile shell around her- shiny and hollow where their laughter echoes. I let her words wind their way into my mind and choose their own reactions to pull out. We split into small groups of three or four, each of us sorting out which of our thoughts we were ready to share, and which thoughts were too tender and entangled in pride or bias to extract and expose, yet. Through her poem and her honesty, Chrystos carried me a step forward by allowing me an opportunity to reflect on how my White Privilege, even as a child, was gained from her loss. I need another week to reflect on this before sharing my feelings with next Wednesday’s small group discussion.

Though Wednesday is but one day, I often find myself thinking about the readings and discussions throughout the week. I reflect on them by trying to be more conscious of my actions and my words, my intent and motivation. Sometimes I am brave enough to deeply examine the bias the readings stir within me. Other times the images and words expose me to bits of Missoula to which I had turned a blind eye- or to which my eyes had never opened and now can’t close. And sometimes I fail to think or challenge myself at all, too busy floating irresponsibly through my day in a bubble of White Privilege. I’m not proud of these days, but they do happen. When they do I’m glad there are Wednesdays and a group of people who expect more from me.

Between Wednesdays the staff of the YWCA works with countless amazing and dedicated volunteers to bring services to the community aimed at eliminating racism and empowering women. This endeavor is a fight for principles. If one is honest, it is impossible to fight for principles that one does not put every effort towards living up to oneself. There is hollowness to a quest for principle fought by one who does not struggle to further that principle within himself or herself. The quest is empty like the shiny shell of echoes Chrystos describes in her poem. The training program YWCA volunteers go through before they begin work with the organization is like a week of Wednesdays designed to encourage internal struggle- a week of encouraging forthrightness with oneself and honesty in interactions with others.

In Adlai Stevenson’s 1952 and 1956 bids for presidency he built his campaigns on a platform of honesty and forthrightness. They were the twin principles upon which he endeavored to live both his political and personal lives. Both of his presidential campaigns occurred during the formative years of the civil rights movement and in both of his campaigns he promoted perseverance and steadiness of course in combating the inequity of institutionalized segregation. His wisdom and principles drew the support and friendship of former first lady and champion of the principle of equality, Eleanor Roosevelt. He said of her “she would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.” The YWCA staff and volunteers, in an effort to live up to the principles for which we fight, seek to emulate visionaries before us by lighting our own candles and fanning the flames.

I am grateful for the Theresas and Martins, Truths and Woolfs and Kings of the world, the Stevensons and Roosevelts. Their speeches and stories struck sparks that set the world ablaze. I am most grateful for the time between the speeches and stories, the everyday living that made them great. Eliminating racism and empowering women is not often thrilling, immediately gratifying, or showered with recognition and praise. It is pausing, and replaying a racist or sexist thought that crosses your mind and experiencing the discomfort of your own bias as you explore its root. It’s hands and knees on the carpet scrubbing at the site of a butter cream frosting disaster after an end-of-semester party for sixth grade girls graduating from an empowerment group. And it’s looking up and down that mountain ridge and facing where you are, forthrightly and honestly, and being thankful for the opportunity to climb. Living up to principles is not glamorous or shiny, but in each of those things- in deepening the understanding of your own prejudice as you move to release yourself from it, in the sticky, sugary smiles of sixth-grade cup-cake bakers, and in the conviction that each step you take towards living up to principles carries meaning- there is reward. There is a sense of purpose that lasts while the veneer of glamour flakes away and a steadiness of course that burns like a candle, lighting the way while what is shiny tarnishes. I am in the company of lofty people doing daily things, and I aspire to be more like them.