If you walked the Albany, N.Y., river­front park in the summer, you would not be surprised to find people enjoying cookouts and the playground. Once a month, you’d come across a larger cookout with banners that read “National Union of the Homeless” and “Homeless, Not Helpless.” On the surface this looks no different than any other group using the public park. You could stop for a burger, chat a little and be on your way. Everyone is welcome. 

Stay a few minutes, and you’ll notice unusual details: people’s belongings in shopping carts, a familiar face you’ve seen panhandling at the exit ramp, someone else making sure the redeemable bottles are collected. There will be someone wearing a button or shirt reading “National Union of the Homeless” who will ask you about housing, healthcare and food insecurity. Someone might make a speech about housing as a human right. 

You might gather that this isn’t a typical nonprofit. 

At the National Union of the Homeless, we call these activities Projects of Survival. While they might look like other food distributions or neighborhood cookouts, there is education and organizing happening around issues of fundamental human rights. 

In our organizing, we often partner with agencies that provide desperately needed services. We canvass outside of food pantries or set up tables and mini health clinics at community meals. These partnerships are invaluable: We have conversations about issues facing our community where people are already going to have a need met. 

But it is also important to hold actions and organizing events independently. Our society teaches us that poor people are criminals or charity cases, dangerous or helpless. Even the most well-meaning people are susceptible to this deeply ingrained idea.

We must challenge this narrative. Central to our organizing is that we are the poor, organizing the poor. By organizing independently, even something as simple as a summer cookout, we are undermining the idea that poor people are incapable of making change. 

Projects of Survival have a long history. The Vigilance Committees of the Abolition Movement are an example. Formerly enslaved Black workers were assisted materially, through daring efforts of Underground Railroad conductors. When they arrived at safehouses, frequently run by leaders of the Vigilance Committees, their stories and experiences were documented and shared. This provided valuable intelligence for the slavery-abolition movement, as well as challenging the racist slaveholder ideologies that insisted Black people were helpless, docile or that they enjoyed enslavement. 

In 1969, the Black Panther Party developed a free Breakfast for Children Program, providing meals in poor communities, but most important, using those meals as sites of political education for the children and their families. More than simply offering a meal, the Panthers provoked agitating questions designed to organize for systemic change. Why are our children hungry? Who benefits from this situation? How can we organize together to change this? 

The Panthers referred to these programs as “Survival Pending Revolution.” The FBI, intent on destroying the Panthers, recognized the Breakfast for Children Program as one of their most potent organizing tools. 

In the late 1980s, chapters of the National Union of the Homeless took over vacant HUD housing, demanding safe and decent housing and an end to homelessness. They politicized the housing crisis and challenged the narrative of helplessness. Breaking into vacant HUD housing amid a homelessness crisis exposed the contradiction of poverty amid plenty and raised questions about the priorities of a society that would let people sleep and die on the street while available housing sat empty. 

“People have to get over this being against the law,” said one leader, Ron Casanova. “I’m dying in the street. That should be against the law.” 

Our faith communities are well-
positioned to develop these kinds of programs. Many congregations have mission or service programs that involve food pantries, community meals or other activities where the poor gather to meet their immediate needs. 

Organizing can start small, asking our neighbors questions that get to the root causes of poverty: Why are we poor in the wealthiest country in history? Who benefits from this? What do you think we can do about it? 

The care and compassion offered in our congregations is a necessary ingredient in organizing. No amount of charity will end the system that produces poverty. Organizing among the poor can happen over shared food. Our survival depends on it.