Last week Terry set the context for the homily today. And I myself felt quite nostalgic listening to him when I was not even a member of this community at the time of all the trouble. So  I want to start by saying thankyou to  everyone of you for standing your ground, speaking your truth, putting up a fight and most of all holding hands with each other in solidarity for what each of you felt was right in the eyes of truth. . I am so glad I found you all 5 yrs ago.!

Today I’m going to talk about 3 things.

1. what is the core essence of the QCA
2. a story from my own life on community organising which is the method that the alliance uses.
3. I’m going to offer a couple of suggestions on how  we  can engage   with the alliance for  2 reasons- Terry articulated them last week.

1 . Our longterm sustainability as a community and

2. more importantly , How can we as a community be more effective in our world from a social justice perspective.Given that we face so many crisis situations out there as a global family..

In saying that I want to acknowledge many us as individuals and small groups that are currently working on several social justice causes as well as via our association with Micah either by volunteering or via monetarily.

So what is the core essence of the QCA ?

The alliance is about restoring values back to society by rebuilding our civil society organizations.  “Values based” organizations like ourselves.

So why does the Alliance  want to rebuild civil society?

In trying to understand how society works the alliance has divided it up into  three distinct sectors. The Market, the Government and Civil society.Where the Market is business, the Govt- Politicians and Parliament and Civil society -  values based organizations like ourselves - Faith communities, Unions and other Diverse community groups.

So in an ideal situation, these 3 sectors operate in balance- with each other by  holding each other to account.

But in Australian history, the relationships between these 3 sectors and the size of each sector has varied quite a lot over the last 200 yrs.No time to explain the whole 200 yr narrative.

From  1970 to the Present Day-

The balance between these 3 sectors has gone completely out of whack. The Market is the most dominant sector, and government often believes its role is to serve the market.

In 2008 the Market had grown so big that it wasn’t able to be held to account and we had the Global Financial Crisis as a result of that.

And Civil society, our faith communities , unions, and community organizations – have become weaker and more isolated.

So in a nut shell the Market/Big business is the most dominant and our values based Communities like ourselves are becoming weaker and weaker. And what happens when values diminish in society? Well we only need to open the papers, watch tv etc .

To turn around this imbalance requires us to strengthen civil society. so that we can reclaim our role in the public arena.

We believe this is possible, by building an alliance powerful Civil society organizations like ourselves.

So how do we build up Civil Society organizations?

We use a process called Community Organising. The basis of Community Organising is firstly about deep listening. We listen to each other, our pressures, our challenges in our every day lives.

Then its about  harnessing the passion and power of large numbers of everyday people like ourselves to take grass roots action .

We do this  from a WE mentality rather than an US and THEM mentality. So in other words working together with our leadership by holding them to account for why we put them into office in the first place. And we do this via what we call a public assembly where we gather in large numbers, we invite the relevant decision makers and publicly ask them whether them for a commitment to whatever the “ask” is.  Before the actual assembly we have also listened to our politicians and built relationships with them . It is a very structured and powerful method .

Some of the biggest successful social change movements in the history of our world used community organising . the civil rights movement, the women suffragets,the indian freedom movement. Gandhi used Community organising to mobilise over  1 million indians and overthrow 200 years of imperial rule. And more recently Obama used it for his congressional campaign.

Obama said that change can only happen from the bottom up not the top down.So it is a proven process.

I’m going to end this segment by changing Margaret Meads quote to say “ Never underestimate that a large group of communities like ourselves can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever will”

So moving onto the next part

I’m going to share a story about community organising in my life.

About 1.5 yrs ago due to my own personal circumstances, I felt the need to build a stronger neighbourhood in Woolloongabba, where I live. I come from a strong community background in India and so I had that vision in my mind.

So one day I decided to go out and dooknock and over a 2 month period I had over 100 conversations just listening to what other people wanted and whether they was an intersection there with what I wanted. I had a 98% success rate. It was very encouraging and so I then  rang our local papers to do a story inviting people to contact me if they were interested . The following week 4bc radio rang me for an interview. As a result of the publicity I was getting many emails, phonecalls and letters in my mail box.

During my conversations with people I was able to pick out the people that were the most passionate and formed what we call our core team - With many people on board the project - I  then scheduled a meeting  with our local councillor Helen Abraham who was very supportive .

She put us  in touch with key people. She also sent out letters to 350 people on the electoral roll  giving the project more exposure. So this is the part where we engaged with our councillor - Working together.

We had our first meeting on the 16th feb 2014 which was well attended by 52 residents. We sat in a large circle and shared what our hopes and dreams as a community. Then as a core team we went thru and picked out the common threads- we call this a discernment meeting, deciding which are the common issues as well as identifying where the passion was.

Since then we have  had 5 social events, formed a garden group who recently had a big win. They manged to get Dept of Main Rds to give them a block of land for a community garden. the handover was day before yesterday, we have our own website and currently building our own app to keep everyone in the loop. Putting up a big black board- 5m by 3m where we can share ideas in a public space. Also working with  a local currency system called LETS -Local energy trading system. which is skills based- so even if you dont have a job you can use your skills as your currency . And lots of other little iniatives.

When I walk or drive on the streets I often bump into someone even at coles and have a little chat. It makes me feel good.

Our next project is  to declare one sunday a month when we turn off our televisions and turn on our neighbourhood. people come out and chat with a glass of wine . As well as getting local businesses involved to support our social events.Build a kind of cross loyalty there.

So it was deep listening  to evoke passion and then collaboration ...an alliance of many people , engaging with our local councillor, holding her to account , ending with grass roots action that made the project a success.

So that’s what community organising is .

So lastly.

How can we engage with the alliance.?

For starters there is a 2 day training coming up in October which is free .So it would be great for many of us to do that.It will really give us  a clear understanding of the whole Alliance and its work . The community organising cycle etc.

We are also scheduling a series of listening campaigns as a community. But we can have them anywhere, in peoples homes, at cluster groups etc. It is very easy to run a table talk. We can listen on different levels- our personal pressures and challenges, our issues as a community internally or on bigger social justice issues. Watch a short clip on table talks here

So as you just saw, its a very informal sharing- on a more personal level - It calls for a bit of authenticity and vulnerablity.

Conclusion: I’d like to end with a quote by the great Indian sage Patanjali ; He said

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

My prayer today is for our community is that we listen deeply to each other and  engage with the alliance to  make our  world a better place for our children and future generations. 1

Thankyou.