WeRoc March 2018 Meeting Recap

It wasn’t pretty, but a good group was able to connect by phone while the snow piled up last Thursday. (Thanks again to Community Church of God for being willing to host, even if it didn’t work out for us to be there!). Here’s a summary of key things you’re going to want to know about, and/or contact key WeROC leaders about, to learn more or find out how a little of your time, added to many others, adds up to a powerful, unified voice on our issues. Join an Action Team or Committee with however much or little time you have, and remember that even if they look like different paths, they are all closely linked to each other (that how we WIN, right?!

NOTE: Next WeROC Meeting of the Whole will be on April 12, 5:30-7:30 (NOT April 5). Location TBD. More to come on that, but most of the focus will be on a focused training session for us all, to learn about the successful techniques for a serious fundraising event with an action-oriented organization like WeROC. (See below)

Education Action Team: Chair Pastor Jeff Harrold gave this update on the Ed Action Team’s current plans. Let him or Tad Wysor know you can be a part of this new and continued work, and we’ll get you on that list.

Advocate with CMH to provide more treatment for k-12 students who have experienced trauma, as a preventative measure to decrease behaviors that lead to suspensions and expulsions.
Advocate for all school districts to have trauma response teams to respond to acts of racial violence
Advocate for district-wide policies against racial violence
Advocate for training for teachers and other school personnel on how to respond to issues of racial intimidation
Plan a half day retreat to develop action steps to accomplish the above goals.
Use technology such as Zoom and conference call application to allow people to participate virtually in our meetings.

Mental Health Equity Action Team:

Convenors for this team — Pastor George Waddles, Pastor Victoria James, and Sheryl Kelly — have created a gathering aimed at the faith community for March 15. With the Community Mental Health Advisory Committee (Pastor Waddles is a member) beginning to work in earnest to provide community input to decisions on how to spend the millions of new dollars from the November millage, this meeting will provide critical “bottom-up” input to make sure the money is spent in the best ways to meet the broad needs in the community, especially in eastern Washtenaw. Contact Tad Wysor for more info on the event.
We also heard from Lois Richardson that a similar advisory committee being set up to recommend how the other big chunk of
The Action Team is also paying attention to the remaining millage dollars that are going to individual municipalities with their own police departments, to be sure that those communities appropriately focus some of their millage dollars on mental health crisis as well as public safety..

Veterans Action Team:

Jim Anderson and John Hollingsworth are organizing an upcoming meeting for this committee. Focus of this new Action Team include pushing for better coordination of local services for our veterans, especially veterans of color, and to carve out veteran-specific priorities for how the millage money is spent as it relates to the special challenges of our veterans. See Jim or Tad for more…and please point the veterans in your life toward this exciting new vehicle for improving the lives of veterans and those around them.

Fundraising Committee

Plans are well underway for the Inaugural WeROC Prayer Breakfast fundraisier. Here’s another way to plug into WeROC, as we work to ensure that we have independent dollars, no strings attached, for our unique organizing work. As Sister Lois said on the call, we need a few more to help get it off the ground, but it will be up to ALL of us to turn it into a big success. Target date is on a Saturday Morning in June or July.
Because we have such a good model to follow about how to do a fundraising event that, yes, raises funds, but also builds our grassroots power with our “big sister” organization MOSES in Metro Detroit, we will focus most of the next
Final note: Those of you who took petitions at the last meeting on Earned Paid Sick Time and on One Fair Wage, please talk to Tad about returning those you’ve circulated to your congreagation, organization, or network, and get more if you need them!

For more information, contact Tad Wysor