Thread by @pwcdanica

Story time:
Last week when hundreds of y'all joined me in helping out Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Gainesville after a 2012 arson fire gutted the building that's been an institution of the Black community in western PWC since the 1880s, y'all donating were quite diverse:

A fundraising drive led by a trans woman (hi), with donations from LGBTQ folks, religious folks, atheists, non-theists, people in western Prince William County and as far west as Oregon, different races and ideologies... it was all for MPBC, which has less than 150 members.

None of us called the church leadership before we donated to ask about what they preached, how they believed or what they believed. None of us said, "Well, I'll only support you if..." None of us donated because we believed they believe the same things as each of us.
No.

We donated because the injustice inflicted upon MPBC goes beyond religion, ideology, politics... you name it.
This is about a part of our community in western Prince William County. This is about the Black community of western PWC. This is about them, not us.
It's about values.

Our value statement from donating is, "When an injustice is inflicted upon your community, our entire community needs to respond. We are each other's keeper."
It's been eight years since that arson and it's still not repaired because not enough people have donated enough money.

That's not the fault of any one individual. It's a community problem. We didn't do enough to help our neighbors during their time of need. It took a national crisis of racial injustice through murder, violence and other forms of racism to remind us that this scar hasn't healed.

But last Thursday, when I talked to the pastor and first lady of MPBC, they told me that it's not about what's happened; it's about what we're doing now, today, in the present. They're grateful for the help they have received during the last 8 years -- but they need a lot more.

We talked on the phone for a long time and we went beyond discussions about rebuilding the church and the $20,207 we had raised in 33 hours.
I told them that all of this wasn't about religion; it was about helping them.
That led me to what I thought would be a side story but...

...before I get to that, a back story:
I've known them for a long time. I covered the arson attack on their church, sat in on some of their services at their temporary location off Glenkirk Rd, and interviewed MPBC's leadership for stories about rebuilding in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

The thing about working as a local newspaper reporter for more than nine years before running for office is you know the people of your community -- and they know you too. They had seen my gender transition play out before them as my appearance changed even before my name did.

Never during that time though did they try to judge me or -- the thing I find the most egregious -- weaponize prayer against me. (I'll never forget someone who scowled, "I'm going to pray for you!!!" as a threat toward me.)
They haven't tried to change me. They've just been kind.

Since I've been in office, I visited MPBC members during bake sales in front of the charred church and at the Manassas African-American Heritage Festival. We'd catch up here and there at different events but I never talked to them about my own sense of religion or spirituality.

That's where it's hard. I spent 13 years in Catholic schools - baptized and confirmed. I chose my college and I loved going to St. Bonaventure but even there, I didn't feel safe to transition and only came out to women who were my closest friends. The previous 9 years made that.

Catholic school is a tough place today to figure out you're queer or trans, let alone during the '90s and early '00s. I remember being 10 years old and crying myself to sleep because I thought I was going to hell for being queer, let alone trans. I told no one until I was 17.

Yet that didn't stop other people from figuring me out and the slurs followed, even as a total close case.
All I needed to hear was, "God made trans people trans and gay people gay. It's okay. Go be you."
That day never came.
Enter alienation.

The message I had to hear over and over instead was, "Love the sinner but hate the sin" -- the sin, in this case, being the very core of my identity that allows me to love another person and to be the woman I was born to be.
When you're taught to "hate" that, you're hating me.

I told that story on the phone to the pastor and first lady of MPBC while trying to explain how it didn't matter what their religious beliefs were, that I just wanted to help them because something so horrible was done to them.
But I couldn't finish that thought.
I just cried.

There was a lot of repressed feelings that came out in that cry: hurt, fear, anger, bewilderment... and above all, an alienation I've carried for 25 of my 35 years.
But then pastor and first lady talked to me for at least 7 mins uninterrupted... and they were genuinely caring.

Without divulging the personal part of the conversation, suffice it to say the pastor's had a world of challenges during the last 8 years that have required a world of patience & difficult uncertainty.
But what we did for them last week reminded him, "We haven't been forgotten."

When you go back into the Corporal Works of Mercy, there's a theme about not forgetting people:
Visit the sick. Visit the imprisoned. Bury the dead.
And then there's basic service:
Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked. Give shelter to travelers.

Not wanting to be forgotten is integral to so much of our identity. Creating equity to help people left behind.
When you know what it feels like to be alienated, your internal goodness wants to prevent it from happening to someone else, even if you're not always good at it.

To come full circle with this thread, I wasn't thinking about alienation, stigma or the feeling of being forgotten last Tuesday when I started fundraising for MPBC. It was just an opportunity for direct action to help part of our local Black community. We need to meet the moment.

What it ended up becoming though without me realizing it at the time was a way to confront some of my feelings of religious alienation; to see people hurting and say, "I couldn't possibly know what your hurt is like but I do know what it's like to be hurt... and I want to help."

I don't know if any of the 500+ people who've donated since Tuesday share a similar feeling and none of us asked about their stance on affirming identities.
All I know is their church was stolen from them. We
to help them rebuild it.
Let's get it done:
gofundme.com/f/q3be24