Featuring a New MOSES Member: The Crossing!
By Margaret Irwin
Welcome to The Crossing – a new member of MOSES! A multifaith, progressive student ministry at UW-Madison, its home is a beautiful, welcoming building that has stood on University Avenue since 1917. The Crossing is affiliated with and supported by three Protestant denominations: the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, and the American Baptist Church. It welcomes students of any or no religious background to cultivate friendships, deepen their spiritual lives through worship and discussion, and engage in justice advocacy and service.
Currently, three students receive stipends to lead justice work in three areas: labor rights, immigration rights, and student food insecurity. The Crossing provides 1,000 meals monthly in the form of free hot meals, lunches, and frozen meals. The meals come from leftover food that students in the dormitories didn’t purchase.
Executive Director Mike Burch came to The Crossing a year ago from Berkeley, Calif. An American Baptist minister for 30 years, Mike brings a wealth of experience as a nonprofit director, a senior pastor, and a seminary professor. Most surprisingly, at the beginning of his career, he served for a year as UW wrestling coach! Mike is passionate about reform of the criminal-legal system. Next fall, he plans to add additional stipends for student leaders in the areas of incarceration reform, housing accessibility, and racial justice.
It didn’t take Mike long to get connected with Jerry Hancock of the First Congregational United Church of Christ Prison Ministry Project, and with MOSES Organizer James Morgan. This led to The Crossing becoming a member of MOSES, in collaboration with the Prison Ministry Project. Mike is eager to get students involved in the work of MOSES. In April, Talib Akbar will set up a model solitary confinement cell on the first floor of The Crossing, so students can learn about this inhumane treatment of incarcerated people. Mike also wants students to get involved in the issues surrounding re-entry. He hopes to expand work on campus to reach out to students who have been affected by the carceral system, either personally or through family members. He says there are many more such individuals than we might suspect.
To sum up, Mike states that people need to get behind MOSES, which is in a position to have an immediate impact on the criminal-legal system. MOSES has great leadership, he says, and with more funding it will do even greater things. “Let’s get the community behind MOSES!” he concludes.