Why I Am a Sustaining Member
Why I Am a Sustaining Member
By Barbie Jackson
I am so grateful that I was able to find my way to MOSES in 2017. So grateful that I learned how to roll up my sleeves and help this marvelous organization advocate for social justice.
I have learned from MOSES that successful advocacy requires us to build power, which in turn requires organized people and organized money. We organize people through our relationships with one another and with those we hope to influence. We organize money by donating financially, and the most effective way to do that is by being a sustaining member – that is, setting up a monthly donation, deducted from our checking account.
So why is MOSES so important to me? I tell this story every time I have a one-on-one conversation to build relationships within MOSES.
I was blessed to be able to raise a traumatized niece and nephew who were found to be in need of protective services. It was challenging at first, but we built a family of care and healing through the years. After both children had graduated from high school, I found my way to the Allied Drive neighborhood and began a 25-year journey mentoring teens. Most of these children were Black. Many came from traumatic family circumstances. Some struggled a great deal, some found success in life, and some had trouble with the law from time to time.
In the summer of 2016, while I was out of the country, I heard one more time about a policeman shooting a young, unarmed Black man in the back. I had heard these terrible stories many times before, but this time I was deeply impacted. I couldn’t reach and hug the children I knew, and I realized this could have happened to someone I had grown to love. At that moment, I determined that I would make a change to the systems that allowed such violence to occur.
That fall at a community meeting I met James Morgan, who is now MOSES’s community organizer, and Jeannie Verschay, who co-chairs MOSES’s longest-standing task force. We were talking about criminal-legal system reform, and they encouraged me to join their work, which I did.
I have learned from MOSES how to understand the problems with the carceral system in this country, the extreme racial disparities in Wisconsin’s prisons and the Dane County Jail, and the systemic traumatization of children in need of protective services, who enter the public school system with traumas that affect their sense of belonging, and thus their learning capacity and sometimes their behavior.
We seek to disrupt all of these systems. Together we learn and grow in relationship to build power and make the change we envision. And together we can contribute the money needed to support this work. That is why I am a sustaining member. Please join me.