Well House
Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.wellhousegr.org

Excerpt from their website:

“Well House has offered temporary emergency shelter to women and families since 1978. Its namesake in 10th century Scotland was run by a religious order providing "protection and refuge" for pilgrims to the holy lands. Still today, our resident's stay is a time to rest and to set directions. Over 5,000 people have been assisted over the last 27 years.

“The original Well House "house" was built in 1879 and stands in the inner city at the South-East corner of Cass and Pleasant. Since our humble beginnings, we have added two more houses to our Well House "Home". One of these houses is across the street on the South-West corner of Cass and Pleasant while the other house is just south and next door to the original house. The third house was purchased from the City of Grand Rapids who donated the money they would have spent demolishing the house at it's old location, toward helping us move it to it's present location. This third home was then renovated with the generous donations of our friends. The maximum capacity of Well House is 25 guests. We also have a new 20 x 20 multi-use facility where our pottery facility is located.

“We are non-profit 401(c)(3) corporation. The way we receive our residents is through the Salvation Army Homeless Assistance Program. The expectation at Well House is that residents are serious about getting their life together. The household is structured informally with cleaning and cooking shared between the residents. Much of Well House's existence is dependant on charitable contributions. Contributions come not only in dollars, but also as volunteer services and in-kind donations.”

Grand Rapids/Kent County Homeless

Grand Rapids Area Housing Continuum of Care

www.grahcoc.org

Excerpt from their website:

“The Housing Continuum of Care (HCOC) is a planning body that aims to prevent and end homelessness by coordinating our community’s resources and services for homeless and precariously-housed families and individuals.

“The HCOC conducts several planning activities, including bimonthly meetings of its membership, monthly subcommittee meetings, two major annual funding processes, and other planning events.

“The Vision to End Homelessness: We can end homelessness in Kent County by the end of 2014!”

Institute for Global Education

www.iserv.net/~ige/

(Includes: Peace Festival, Radiant Justice, etc)

Excerpt from their website:

“IGE supports the non-violent resolution of conflicts and the pursuit of justice as the best way to achieve true, lasting peace through conscientious individual and group education and action.

“We call for accountability of officials in our own and other countries when their actions work against peace.

“We are a meeting place for community groups that share our concerns about human rights and education for multicultural and religious awareness.

“OUR ACTIVITIES: Established in 1980, IGE presents programs for the public on current issues that increase our understanding and allow for discussion on controversial subjects. We examine the concepts of environmental awareness, global economics, media literacy, sexism, racism, militarism, and class-ism. We encourage action on global and local responsibility. IGE promotes peaceful conflict resolution through training, workshops with youth and adults, and ongoing community discussion. IGE publishes Equity, a quarterly publication that focuses on the experiences and informed opinions of our membership on world affairs.”

Friends

www.fgcquaker.org

Excerpt from their website:

“What is Friends General Conference?
Friends Serving Friends!”

Topics at their website, include: Welcome to Quakerism, Summer Gathering, Find a Quaker Meeting, Friends General Conference Quaker Library, Friends General Connections.

Friends Committee on National Legislation

www.fcnl.org

Excerpts from their website:

“We seek a world free of war and the threat of war
We seek a society with equity and justice for all
We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled
We seek an earth restored.”

“The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is the largest peace lobby in Washington, DC. Founded in 1943 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), FCNL staff and volunteers work with a nationwide network of tens of thousands of people from many different races, religions, and cultures to advocate social and economic justice, peace, and good government. Our mission statement gives an overview of our vision for our work.

“FCNL is also the oldest registered, ecumenical lobby in Washington, DC.”

Creative Response to Conflict, Inc.

www.crc-ny.org

Excerpt from their website:

“Creative Response to Conflict, Inc. (CRC) empowers children and adults by teaching them the skills to find nonviolent, creative solutions to conflict and bullying. CRC seeks to reduce violence in our homes, schools and communities by offering workshops in cooperation, communication, affirmation, bias awareness, bullying prevention, mediation, and creative problem solving.”

Circle of Peace/FAVAN
(Families Against Violence Advocacy Network)

http://64.143.25.250/FAVAN--2dNEW.htm

Excerpt from their website:

“In 1996, the Institute for Peace and Justice’s Parenting for Peace and Justice Network (PPJN) and the PPJN Advisory Board convened a gathering of US and Canadian leaders to explore how to respond to the escalating violence in families, communities, and our world. From this gathering emerged the Families Against Violence Advocacy Network (FAVAN) and the Pledge of Nonviolence as the primary tool for educating and organizing families and communities to challenge violence at all levels and to live more nonviolently. FAVAN is a broadly based network of organizations, families and individuals committed to violence prevention and the promotion of alternatives to violence in our families, schools, faith communities, youth groups, colleges, workplaces and prisons.”

Institute for Peace and Justice

http://www.ipj-ppj.org/

Excerpt from their website:

“From its beginning in 1970, IPJ’s advocacy priorities focused on alternatives to war and violence and on racial and economic justice. With the development of the Families Against Violence Advocacy Network (FAVAN), IPJ’s advocacy priorities expanded to include gun violence, violence in the media, violence in schools, domestic violence, and hate violence. See “Five Steps to Break the Cycle of Violence” for specific suggestions. Since September 11, 2001, IPJ’s advocacy efforts have focused extensively on alternatives to war and violence in the face of terrorism, as well as on specific legislative actions to counteract the cutting of social programs to pay for US military expansion. How to respond concretely to Dr. King’s “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism” has been the advocacy focus of IPJ’s “Circles of Peace, Circles of Justice Newsletter in 2003-2004.”

A Blessing in Disguise

I was shocked when I read on the internet in 2005 that the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, had possessed for non-payment of taxes the home that Peacemakers Judi Buchman and Richa and several other adults lived in.

I was saddened that they were no longer in this house, once vacant and destined for the wreckers’ ball, that Don Heinzelman and they had saved and rehabilitated with love, spirit, and elbow grease back in the 1970s.

I remembered how great an inspiration their success was to the folks who worked on starting Grand Rapids’ urban homesteading program.

How could this have happened? At the heart of the answer to this question are Judi's and Richa's spiritual beliefs about peace and justice.

Here’s an excerpt from Judi’s and Richa’s story, in their own words, about Getting to the Roots, reprinted with their permission. It was originally published in 2004 in a revolutionary book of stories of people remaking Grand Rapids. ——Michael Chacko Daniels

Excerpt from a Chapter in:

Justicemakers
Stories of people in the Grand Rapids
area who live and work for justice
January 2004

Getting to the Roots

by Judi Buchman and Richa

We were both drawn in to peacemaking in response to a horrible war (yes, all wars are horrible). We saw loved ones, young men from around the country leave to kill others in a distant land. Recognizing that our government was responsible for these tragedies was a rude awakening to us. Richa spent two years in prison for refusing to have anything to do with that war; Judi supported others who refused to participate. We both spoke out, demonstrated, organized, eventually with millions of other people. All of us working together finally did put an end to it.

Part of our peacemaking was refusal to pay federal taxes that would have gone for warmaking, and re-directing that money to life-supporting activities. That forced us to simplify our lives, because we could not earn very much money without being dishonest, which for us was never an option. That meant, among other things, several adults living together in a household, sharing a car or not owning one at all, and consuming less.

But all that turned out to be exactly the right thing for us – a blessing in disguise! We learned more and more about the political/economic system we were born into and were taught was the world’s leading participatory democracy. It does have its good side, but it also contributes heavily to oppression of others and damage to the earth. Our simplification also freed us from working at jobs we didn’t like in order to make a lot of money – jobs that too often also contributed to the destructiveness – and gave us more time to devote to making our world a better place as well as for simply enjoying ourselves.

We’ve seen our earth being plundered. Why was this allowed to happen? We’ve seen suffering locally and around the country, and have heard or read about it in other countries. We’ve learned about our government’s role in so much of this. We’ve had to ask: Why?

When Judi was due for a sabbatical year from teaching, our plan was to go to Mexico to work with a rehabilitation center that we thought could use Richa’s skills at putting things together out of whatever materials were available. But we realized that they already had people with such skills, and many other people we listened to or read about from other countries urged us to make changes here in the US as the best way to give them a chance at a decent life.

After much discussion, study, and prayer, we decided to redirect city and county taxes on our home as a challenge locally to that systemic injustice. Instead of paying that money to City and County government, we gave it to organizations locally and elsewhere that worked for justice. Since our home was in many ways the center of our lives, as well as our major material asset, this was a big risk. Yet it seemed fitting, given our frustration in trying to make progress in other ways, and seeing our nation gradually resume its warmaking and other oppression throughout the world.

We argued that this action was justified due to the extreme needs that were not being addressed otherwise. It was a cry for the people suffering and against the madness of a system that masquerades as democracy and “the free market”.

We further argued that we were meeting our obligation to the community by providing a safe, supportive shelter for homeless people.[1] But local officials did not accept our tax re-direction, and ended up taking our home from us. We did not resist when it came time to evict us, as the house went to a family in need via an “urban homesteading’ program.

Judi moved to a homeless shelter right down the street. That shelter, Well House, had been started years before by a friend, Marian Clements, who had bought the house that became the nucleus of Well House while living with us. Marian had a heart that wouldn’t quit. She knew first hand being a person who dealt with mental health issues. She let us know what it was like to have a mental breakdown – the positive and the negative. With this knowledge we were able to give her the support she needed while living with us, so that she didn’t need to be hospitalized. That was the last time she had a breakdown. This inspired her to want to start her own place for others.

As mentioned, during the 20 years we had our home we shared it with others, taking in people needing shelter, often without charge because they were unable to pay. Richa had done the main work with our “hospitality guests”, with Judi providing periodic support. At Well House that reversed. Judi, with help from Richa and many others, continues the work that Marian did for many years until her death from breast cancer in 1997. While hospitality work at our home was sometimes intense, it is consistently intense at Well House.

Living at Well House is full of many different experiences. You definitely have to be a people person, have lots of energy and like to do a variety of different types of work. Luckily the above is a good job description for Judi. It’s never boring! Judi has learned about boundaries, “tough love” and still being able to build relationships with people she’d probably never have had a chance to meet in other settings. She continuously challenges residents to be all they can be, often pushing them beyond what they think they can do. At the same time we both feel we can be a voice to share the stories and help to change a system that keeps making more people homeless. Challenging systemic inequalities also gives us the credibility to look people in the eye and challenge them to do whatever is within their own power. . . .

[Excerpt reprinted through the courtesy of Judi Buchman and Richa.]

Read More In:
Justicemakers
Stories of people in the Grand Rapids
area who live and work for justice
January 2004
Published by Radiant Justice Implementation Group
under the auspices of
Institute for Global Education
P. O. Box 68039
Grand Rapids, MI, 49516

Hard unbound copies $2 if picked up directly

By postal mail: 1-3 copies: $4 each, 4-10: $3.50 each, 11-24: $3 each, 25 or more: $2.50 each
Add $1 per copy for bound copies (plastic comb, covers with card stock)

Available online at: http://www.iserv.net/~ige/rj/justicemakers.html

Checks are tax deductible. Make out to: Institute for Global Education