I started this work as Executive Director of Partners for Our Communities (POC) last November. People often ask me how it’s going, often with a tone of expecting it to have been very hard to work with an immigrant-serving social service agency beginning in mid-November 2024.
I will say it’s been quite an adventure, but also - every day fills me with hope. I get to show up to work and work with people who are trying to make a difference, people who are trying to make their communities a better place for everyone to live. And that is powerful. Because it’s rooted in hope. And resistance. Hope is an act of resistance.
When we live in a world that tries to drive us apart, that tries to make us give up hope - the act of hope is an act of resistance. When we refuse to give in to cynicism and the inevitability of bad things happening, then we build a better world.
Hope is hard, yes. When federal budget cuts target programs that help the most vulnerable, hope is hard. When law enforcement targets our neighbors and friends and tears families apart, hope is hard. When the President of the United States calls the city and region we love a “hellhole,” hope is hard.
So hope is hard. But it’s also powerful resistance. I get to work with an amazing community of staff, volunteers, and English language learners, who are trying to build bridges across linguistic and other lines. Hondurans and Turks and Ukrainians and Japanese talking together, learning about their common bonds and their distinctiveness - that’s an act of hopeful resistance.
I get to work with amazing staff members and the young people they support in their learning and their leadership. Our amazing group of Middle Schoolers who gather together for support and encouragement is called “Future Leaders.” Calling themselves future leaders is an act of hopeful resistance.
In a world where we are told to look out for number one, the very act of partnership and the building of community is hopeful resistance. At Partners for Our Communities, that’s what we do. We hope. We partner. We build community. We resist.
Hope isn’t always pretty, and it isn’t always graceful. Some days I feel like the cat in this picture, just hanging on. –Seth Moland-Kovash
