Alegra Martin

REMINDER 📕 BOOK DISCUSSION 📕 - Tomorow May 16 at 12 pm ET

The United Church of Christ (UCC) Racial Justice Ministry will host a book discussion featuring,

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in The American City by Matthew Desmond, Thursday, May 16, 2019,

12 noon – 1 pm EST via live webinar.

Evicted will transform our understanding of eviction and its impact on generational poverty through unjust housing policies. Desmond writes, “No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.” Matthew Desmond will be the keynote speaker during the United Church of Christ General Synod this June in Milwaukee, WI.

Can the Church practice what it often preaches, “In that, you did it for one of the least of these of mine, you did it for me.” (Matthew 25:40)? In our book discussion, we have an opportunity to lean in and listen to the lived experiences of those living with the reality of being evicted with no recourse and sometimes no means of support, even from the church.

Book discussions are meant to stimulate new ideas for equipping ourselves and one another to act justly and dismantle systems of injustice. Book discussions are also intended to:

1.      Gather people for a lively and necessary conversation about issues impacting the Church and society

2.      Listen, learn, and develop new ideas and relationships

3.      Engage your congregation, community, and organizations toward racial equity and justice

4.      Learn more about Sacred Conversations to End Racism, a UCC restorative justice journey curriculum

5.      Meet some of the authors and ask relevant questions that will move your work and journey forward

6.      Recommend the books and invite others to join

Register on the Racial Justice Book Discussion webpage. Evicted can be purchased at the UCC Bookstore https://www.uccresources.com/products/evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-the-american-city. Webinar credentials will be one week prior to the discussion. For more information contact Rev. Dr. Velda Love Lovev@ucc.org or Alegra Martin martina@ucc.org

Matthew Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he joined the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. He is the author of four books, including Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Carnegie Medal, and PEN / John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. The principal investigator of The Eviction Lab, Desmond’s research focuses on poverty in America, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality, and ethnography. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award. A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, Desmond was listed in 2016 among the Politico 50, as one of “fifty people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate.”

Check out more information from the Evicted webpage: http://evictedbook.com/videos