From Joseph Tomás Mckellar, Executive Director of PICO California on June 6, 2022
Today, after an eighteen month journey of collective reflection and renewal, we give thanks to our Creator as we celebrate the PICO California network’s in our new, independent, California-based home.
This represents a tremendous milestone in PICO California’s journey to build a more prophetic and powerful network capable of creating important structural changes that advance our vision for a California, country, and world where all people can belong, thrive, and become authors of their own futures. We want to create a future where we re-create our economy in the image of inclusion and solidarity; where the color of one’s skin, language, gender, sexual orientation, or zip code no longer determines their life expectancy. We want to create a future where universal basic wages, good jobs, dignified housing, ample healthcare, restorative justice, clean air and water are fundamental human rights available to all people.
We believe this future is possible when we link arms across our differences and embody what the prophets called “beloved community”. And we understand that we need the power to transform Sacramento and win state, national, and international policy changes if we are to save lives, transform our economy, and make our Common Home habitable for our children and grandchildren.
Today we celebrate the PICO California Renewal Team composed of 20 clergy, elders, leaders, and staff, who shepherded a discerning and strategic visioning process that resulted in a new Renewal Plan to guide our power building over the next decade. Today we celebrate over 1,000 leaders from the PICO California network in 21 counties where we organize who provided input and ideas to strengthen our Renewal Plan, and who voted affirmatively in favor of our four core strategies:
- Launching a School of Faith and Power that teaches 5,000 core community leaders how to organize in a spiritually-rooted, faith-based tradition, with the capacity to mobilize 250,000 Californians
- Advancing a shared state organizing agenda and winning policy changes rooted in our vision, including the ability to reach 2,000,000 Californians receptive to a spiritually-rooted narrative about racial justice and belonging
- Creating new network governance and decision-making structures that make us structurally accountable to the people in our communities
- Building stronger shared infrastructure that provides a more powerful organizational foundation
PICO California’s journey toward establishing a new, independent entity to house our network’s organizing activities would not have been possible without the support of our Faith in Action colleagues. We want to thank the Faith in Action Board Members and Board President Ron White, Rev. Alvin Herring and the entire Faith in Action national network staff team, for affirming this critical step in PICO California’s evolution as a state-wide network. We believe that this will open new doors for a more powerful, synergistic, and collaborative partnership between PICO California and Faith in Action, as we build power together to transform our country (and our world with our Faith in Action International Network siblings). All of the PICO California federations look forward to our shared affiliation with Faith in Action through our newly incorporated PICO California entity.
Two of the prophets upon whose shoulders we stand, James Baldwin, the famed author and civil rights activist, and Reinhold Niebuhr, visionary American Reformist theologian, asked each other in November 1963: what is the role of faith and spirituality in pivotal times, and how does our movement move forward?
As their conversation came to a close, Niebuhr told Baldwin:
“However we act and proceed, it is together and in Pope John XXIII’s old adage that ‘love is the motive, justice is the instrument.’”
Justice is the instrument that facilitates the daily power building efforts of the people of PICO California and Faith in Action. But the final goal – the one that transcends every structure and label – must always be love. Love is what teaches us that the only way forward is together. Love is the operative motive in seeking the best possible social order, while justice is the instrument of love’s application. Love fulfills justice and draws justice into greater and greater achievements. Love can always raise justice to new heights.
The next chapter in our network’s story begins today, together.
Grateful to be building a renewed network, and a more abundant future for families in our communities, with each of you.
In Solidarity,
PICO California Board of Directors and Federation Representatives
Pastor Joy Johnson, President – PICO California Board of Directors
Gloria Morales-Palos, Secretary – PICO California Board of Directors
Rabbi Benjamin Ross, Treasurer – PICO California Board of Directors
Lorena Melgarejo, Executive Director of Faith in Action Bay Area
Reverend George C.L. Cummings PhD, Chair of the Renewal Initiative and Regional Executive Director of Faith in Action East Bay
Pastor Curtis Smith, Executive Director of Faith in the Valley
Lety Valencia, Faith in the Valley
Tom Dolan, Executive Director of Inland Congregations United for Change
Rachel Bishop, Rabbi Jocee Hudson, and Yvonne Figueroa, L.A. Voice
Reverend Ray Montgomery, Executive Director of People Acting in Community Together
Gabby Trejo, Executive Director of Sacramento ACT
Dinora Reyna-Gutierrez, Executive Director of San Diego Organizing Project
Terry Supahan, Executive Director of True North
Joseph Tomás Mckellar, Executive Director of PICO California