📢 Join the Reparations Interfaith Coalition on Zoom! 📢

🗓 Date: March 25
⏰ Time: 7:00 PM

Learn how local citizens are answering the call to repair historical harms against African Americans by reclaiming public spaces and honoring the truth.

Brookline residents Anne Greenwald, Deborah Brown, and Liv Klawiter, alongside Cambridge resident Paula Paris, will share how they worked to transform spaces once dedicated to enslavers into places that honor Florida Ruffin Ridley (Brookline) and Darby Vassall (Cambridge).

These powerful stories will inspire us to truth-tell, advocate, and reclaim public spaces for a more just future.

📣 Don’t miss this opportunity to learn and take action!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

📢 Join Us for Day 2 with MIRA as we engage in the 29th Annual Immigration Day! 📢

🗓 Date: Wednesday, March 19th
⏰ Time: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM
📍 Location: Massachusetts State House, Boston

Episcopal City Mission (ECM), alongside other faith communities, is traveling to the State House as part of an interfaith coalition to stand in solidarity with MIRA (Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition) and immigrant communities across Massachusetts.

This day will highlight powerful stories and collective action, focusing on equity, dignity, and justice for all immigrants. Join us as we come together to build a more inclusive and welcoming future.

We ask that if you are joining as part of the Interfaith Coalition to register to using the link below:

CLICK HERE

Este evento estará disponible en español y inglés. This event will be available in English and Spanish.

Episcopal City Mission is excited to invite you to the zoom launch of our Emergent Action Network, where we aim to provide a hub for Episcopal Churches and people in MA combining accessible ways to take action, spiritual grounding and sustenance, and guidance from BIPOC-led grassroots initiatives. In the face of so many federal threats to our communities and to democracy itself, we need more than ever to truly lean into our faith and our larger faith community. 

We’ll be exploring these questions together:

• How do we cut through the noise and focus our energies to have the most impact?

• How do we sustain ourselves spiritually for the long haul?

• How can we make sense of these national developments at the level of our own state, communities, and lives? What does our local response need to look like?

While the Emergent Action Network is not focused on a single issue, we can expect there to be ongoing themes:

• Protecting immigrants within and beyond our churches;

• Buffering against MA-level impacts of federal cuts on social safety nets;

• How the racial wealth gap in MA intersects with current national political events;

• And community-building practices for spiritual strength through the struggle.

This event will mark the start of the Emergent Action Network which will include monthly community conversations, state and local level actions to buffer against the harms of the Trump administration, and more. We call this “emergent” because it will be shaped as we go. There is so much we can’t know - and yet there is so much we can do.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP TO JOIN THE NETWORK

Click here to register for the zoom link

Many people have reached out about the sample ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Protocols & Policies for Churches on our website! Since there have been so many questions about implementation, we’ve decided to host an open Drop-In Question & Answer Session with Hannah Hafter, Lead Organizer at ECM, and Celia McLane, Immigration Attorney and legal reviewer of the sample policies. If you have questions or are interested in further discussion on adopting and carrying out these policies at your church, please join us on zoom from 12-1 pm on Thursday, March 6th.

The drop-in will be bilingual in English and Spanish.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

Join RIC and ECM on Tuesday, January 28th, at 7 PM via Zoom for Boston in the Shadow of Slavery, featuring Professor Jacqueline Jones, discussing her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, No Right to an Honest Living, which explores Black labor and white hypocrisy in 19th-century Boston.

Register Here: bit.ly/ric0128

The Reparations Interfaith Coalition (RIC) is a Massachusetts-based alliance of ethical and faith communities pursuing reparative justice for Black and Indigenous peoples in solidarity with national efforts. Founded by members of Episcopal City Mission, Boston Workers Circle, and the Jewish Community of Amherst, RIC works alongside Black leaders in the reparations movement.

For a chapter of the Book click here.

Support Families

Join the People's State of the Commonwealth Action on Jan 16

PART 1: THURSDAY JAN 16 DAY OF ACTION - IN PERSON OR AT HOME

IN PERSON: Thursday, January 16th, 12:00–1:00 p.m., in front of the Massachusetts State House on the Beacon Street side, for "The People's State of the Commonwealth: Spotlight on Family Homelessness" action.

AT HOME: Thursday, January 16th, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., State House call-in day for our "The People's State of the Commonwealth: Spotlight on Family Homelessness" action. We will be calling state legislators and the Governor to advocate for key funding and improvements to the state's response to family homelessness.

To sign up to join either one fill out this form from the MA Coalition for the Homeless. Those that sign up for the call-in day will receive instructions on the 16th over email.

PART 2: GET YOUR LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS TO SIGN THE LETTER

Local City and Town elected officials - like City Counselors, Mayors, and School Board members - are now organizing to call on the Governor and the MA Legislature to fully fund and restore family shelter. Our friends at UU Mass Action have put together a great one-page toolkit so you can learn more and invite your local officials to sign on here. They'll be joining over 100 others who have already signed!

If you happen to have existing relationships with any local elected officials where you live, please reach out to them personally to ask!

If you haven't yet sent an email to the governor through our easy click-though action, please do it now!

If you are a faith leader, you can sign the clergy petition too! 

Join us for a Post-Election Reflection and Prayer on Thursday, November 7th, from 6-7:30 pm EST on Zoom. This online gathering will offer a space for friends of ECM to come together, share reflections, and pray in light of the election. All are welcome to join as we hold space for support, contemplation, and solidarity during this time.

Click HERE to register.

Join us for the 180th Annual Meeting of Episcopal City Mission! This year's annual meeting will take place at a new location, All Saints Episcopal Church in Worcester, Massachusetts from 9am - 1pm. This event is hybrid but registration is required. CLICK HERE to register. Once you open up the ECM eventbrite page, click "Select tickets" to register, located on the left of your screen. For those who will attend virtually you will be able to indicate this by clicking the same button and then selecting "virtual attendance." We will follow up with more details in early October regarding live-streaming and parking.

All Canonically Resident Clergy and Two Lay Persons from every parish will be able to vote, and every one else in attendance will be granted seat and voice to participate in the meeting. Please register if you intend to participate to receive updates and other critical information ahead of the meeting.

Any questions? Email ECM at admin@ecmteam.us

Since family shelter stopped being guaranteed in MA in August, volunteers have had a fast-paced and heartbreaking few months supporting unhoused families at the train stations and welcome centers. Others have been working to open the doors of their congregations or personal homes to provide shelter and keep families off the streets. Over the past three months we have witnessed how state systems are deeply failing our newest neighbors. On Oct 22nd from 7-8:30 pm, we will offer a training for volunteers to come together to learn, understand the basic principles of accompaniment and solidarity, and discuss how to take care of ourselves in the face of systemic injustice so that we can stay engaged in this work. If you are new to volunteering, we will include some concrete steps on how to get more involved! Workshop developed by Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN), Episcopal City Mission, and MA Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.

Click Here to Register.

Episcopal City Mission, as part of the Reparations Interfaith Coalition (RIC), invites you to the first event of our "Learning and Action" series on September 30th at 7:00pm EST. This first webinar will focus on Massachusetts' little-known history of slavery and its impact and legacies. Our featured presenters, Nicole Aljoe, Professor of Africana Studies and English at Northeastern University, and Savita Maharaj, a Ph.D. student at Brandeis University, will explore the theme of Re-imagining Early Black Boston and discuss their work on the Boston Black History digital project. Those that attend this zoom event will be invited to walking tours for an experiential and community-oriented opportunity to continue our learning and action. Learn more about RIC at their new website, www.reparationsma.org and register for the event at http://bit.ly/ric930

New regulations in Massachusetts' emergency shelter system now limit many families to just five nights of stay, after which they must leave. Parents face a difficult choice: accept the five-night limit or be placed on a wait-list for long-term shelter. As a result, children are being forced to sleep on the streets, leaving faith communities searching for ways to help.

The Massachusetts Interfaith New Neighbor Coalition invites you to a webinar to explore how we can support migrant families in these dire circumstances. We'll discuss various ways to assist, including the possibility of offering housing in our congregations and homes. Together, we will cultivate spiritual courage, gather resources, advocate for just reforms, and take steps to alleviate human suffering within a deeply broken system.

Join ECM this Thursday, September 12 at 6:30pm EST. Registration required. CLICK HERE to register.

This webinar is hosted by The Massachusetts Interfaith New Neighbors Coalition which includes the following organizations:

• Massachusetts Council of Churches

• Episcopal City Mission

• Jewish Community Relations Council

• UniteBoston

• Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston/Ten Point Coalition

• Capuchin Mobile Ministries

• UU Massachusetts

• Action Network

• Boston Faith & Justice Network

• Worcester Area Mission Society

• Circle of Hope

• Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition

If your congregation is interested in moving forward with sheltering one or more migrant families for any length of time, please email ECM's Lead Organizer, Hannah Hafter, at hannah@ecmteam.us

Join Episcopal City Mission on Zoom to explore the concept of "Solidarity Economy" - alternative models of businesses and investments that center the well-being of people and the planet, co-operation, democracy, and social and racial justice. There is a vibrant solidarity economy growing in MA and many ways for individuals and churches to participate in it! In this webinar we'll hear from the MA Solidarity Economy Network (MA-SEN), Center for Cooperative Development and Solidarity, and the Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA) which works with institutions, including many Episcopal churches, to ethically source some of their major building contract needs. CPA has shifted over $30 million dollars in contracts nationally to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-owned businesses, while saving their participants money through group purchasing. We'll also hear from Episcopalians who have been involved in the Solidarity Economy directly. Solidarity Economy is part of Episcopal City Mission's three-pronged strategy for doing our part to shrink the racial wealth gap in Massachusetts, alongside State Policy and Reparations. Click here to learn more about the racial wealth gap.

To register for this event click here.

Episcopal City Mission is co-sponsoring this upcoming rally in front of the MA State House! You can join "Raise Our Wage! Cap Our Rent!" on May 15 at  12:30 pm by the Embrace statue on the Boston Common, or across from the State House on the Boston Common side at 1 pm.

We plan to bring a strong in-person Episcopal contingent! Come out in person to support the bills that you've been making the calls and emails for! And it's not too late for those either - you can still access the toolkits, and the Rent Control bill's reporting deadline isn't until May 8!

If you want to help out before, during, or after the rally, you can volunteer here! ECM staff will also be part of an "Art Build" on Saturday 5/11 at 12:30 pm if you want to put your creativity to work for justice! E-mail Lead Organizer Hannah Hafter (hannah@ecmteam.us) to join that.

Join us on May 14th, from 6:30-7:30pm, the Reparations Interfaith Coalition (RIC) is teaming up with the Resource Organizing Project to amplify BIPOC-led grassroots movements across Massachusetts.

The imperative for reparations resonates deeply with our collective consciousness, urging us to rectify historical injustices and pave the path towards a future anchored in equity and dignity. As we heed this call, Episcopal City Mission (ECM) proudly supports this event, with one of our own, Neha Rayamajhi, stepping forward to host this webinar entitled “Building a Culture of Repair.” 

Neha will be joined by three of ECM's Burgess Urban Fund grantees: Families for Justice as Healing, Stories Inspiring Movements, and the Youth Justice & Power Union. Together, they'll illuminate their tireless efforts to construct a socially just world free from the oppressive shackles of racial capitalism and you can learn ways to support their work. 

Additionally, save the date for the grand event this summer, the Celebration of Grassroots Organizing, taking place on June 29th. You can support the organizations mentioned above by being a sponsor, buying a ticket, becoming a table host or captain. 

Register for the Celebration of Grassroots Organizing by clicking here!

Register for Building a Culture of Repair Webinar by clicking here!

Episcopal City Mission is co-sponsoring this upcoming rally "Raise Our Wage! Cap Our Rent!” The rally will take place on May 15 but in preparation we are looking for volunteers to help create posters, banners, and other visual displays on May 11 at 12:30pm. ECM staff will be there and if you want to put your creativity to work for justice e-mail Lead Organizer Hannah Hafter (hannah@ecmteam.us) to join. This Art Build will take place at the office of City Life/Vida Urbana located at 284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain.