In this episode of Educating to be Human, Lisa is joined by Jon Pedigo, known by some as Father Jon. He is a longtime social justice advocate and activist, faith leader within the Catholic diocese of San Jose, and the new executive director of People Acting in Community Together, or PACT. In conversation, they explore what it means to rebuild connection in a time of deep division, how faith communities can act as ancient technologies for compassion and healing, and the power of grassroots organizing to help people claim their own agency...
In this episode of Educating to be Human, Lisa is joined by Jon Pedigo, known by some as Father Jon. He is a longtime social justice advocate and activist, faith leader within the Catholic diocese of San Jose, and the new executive director of People Acting in Community Together, or PACT. In conversation, they explore what it means to rebuild connection in a time of deep division, how faith communities can act as ancient technologies for compassion and healing, and the power of grassroots organizing to help people claim their own agency and voice, particularly in difficult times.
Fr. Jon Pedigo, a Bay Area native, has been active in civic affairs and social justice causes for over 35 years in the Bay Area.
Working with the interfaith community of Silicon Valley, labor, community organizers, and civil rights activists, Fr. Jon was just named the Executive Director for PACT, People Acting In Community Together. In his previous position as the Director of Advocacy and Community Engagement for Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, he developed a methodology of trauma-informed community organizing for people living in chronic poverty, refugees, and immigrant families. Fr. Jon has been acknowledged as a social justice advocate for immigrants and social change by many local organizations and received commendations from various public officials.
Resources:
https://www.cliniclegal.org/stories/grupo-de-solidaridad-brings-community-together
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/06/11/what-church-san-jose-doing-prepare-post-covid-future
https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/socal-connected/how-california-went-from-anti-immigration-to-sanctuary-state
Transcript:
00:00:06 - 00:33:16
Jon Pedigo:
The core of our humanity and what defines us isn't these separations, but it's our ability to care and heal. And through that kind of impulse religions kind of evolved as a technology to pull out of the best of humanity, our ability to connect to each other and to connect to the divine.
00:33:18 - 01:04:06
Lisa Petrides
This is Educating to be Human. And I'm your host, Lisa Petridis, founder of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. In each episode, I sit down with ordinary people, creating extraordinary impact people who are challenging notions of how we learn, why we learn, and who controls what we learn. Thank you very much for listening.
01:04:08 - 01:45:23
Lisa Petrides
I'm so delighted to be speaking with Jon Pedigo today. Also known by some as Father Jon and he is a longtime social justice advocate and faith leader within the Catholic Diocese of San Jose, California, and the new executive Director of People Acting in Community Together or PACT. Pact. And in our conversation, we explore what it means to rebuild connection in a time of deep division and how faith communities can act as ancient technologies for compassion and healing.
01:46:00 - 01:56:00
Lisa Petrides
And the power of grassroots organizing to help people claim their own agency and voice. So welcome, Jon and thank you for being with us here today.
01:56:01 - 01:58:01
Jon Pedigo:
Thanks, Lisa.
01:58:03 - 02:17:24
Lisa Petrides
So we're living in a time of fragmentation, right? Deep polarization, ICE raids in cities, authoritarian impulses on the rise. I mean, even technology is threatening to replace human connection. What do you see as the defining challenges of this moment?
02:18:01 - 02:51:22
Jon Pedigo:
What are defining challenges of this moment really are in just the profound loss of relationships that are in our community, the sort still profound separation, the divorce that happens in families because of ideology and politics. And in many cases, for good reason that people just simply aren't safe in their homes or in their families. They're not feeling safe in their churches and not feeling safe in their workplaces.
02:51:24 - 03:13:06
Jon Pedigo:
They can't really speak their mind. They can't speak out of their heart. So it is not just policy and politics, but it is this very bizarre impulse of division that really is more like a divorce and not a disagreement. And that's kind of where we're coming from on this.
03:13:08 - 03:23:18
Lisa Petrides:
So in the face of this fear and hostility and division, what role can faith communities and spiritual traditions play in bringing people together?
03:23:20 - 04:09:03
Jon Pedigo:
Yeah, that's a great question. I was actually giving a talk the other day, and I brought this, I used religion as a kind of explaining it as, like an ancient technology that, is used to enhance, magnify, amplify our most human dimension, which is compassion and caretaking. Like Margaret Mead said, the sign that she found. And I think there's an old saying, but she just said that the the oldest sign, the oldest indication of human civilization is a healed femur, because that would indicate that the humanoid that was injured was cared for rather than left.
04:09:06 - 04:42:19
Jon Pedigo:
And if you're kind of cutting one's losses that this member of this group of humanoids had felt that it was important that we need to kind of stay together and including this weak person this kind of this link that isn't the strongest. And so that indicated that there was, a decision of care. So that would indicate that at the core of our humanity and what defines us isn't these separations, but is our ability to care and heal.
04:42:21 - 05:13:00
Jon Pedigo:
And through that kind of impulse. Religion's kind of evolved as a technology to pull out of the best of humanity, our ability to connect to each other and to connect to the divine. However, that was defined by early human groupings and societies to find a way to protect and to nurture each other, and especially to pay attention to the weakest among us.
05:13:02 - 05:37:23
Jon Pedigo:
And so that religion, that dimension is dependent on three things. First is that we're connected to each other, that we are connecting out of concern that there is a there's a connection, a social bond, a connection that kind of a I don't know what you would call it, a kind of a covenant. Although that covenant with that concept evolved much, much later.
05:37:23 - 05:54:15
Jon Pedigo:
But there is a a real bond of connectivity. The second thing that's important to recognize is that this bond is connected to actual everyday decisions, right? You know how we're going to actually do things, how we're going to run our how we're going to run our tribe, how we're going to run our our society are going to run this village.
05:54:21 - 06:25:06
Jon Pedigo:
It's with that concern. And the third part is, of course, the divine is that, that that cover all overall sense of that. We stand before some kind of force that could be defined as a nature, could be defined as a spiritual contact, a certain existential dimension of us, that we're connecting to that. So those three pieces kind of bring together what what kind of early religions, religious systems.
06:25:08 - 07:13:21
Jon Pedigo:
And so religion is that technology. The work that I do today, you know, hundreds of thousands of years later is, you know, it hasn't changed that much, especially in community organizing, that we spend the time to understand the impact of, of injuries caused by poverty, violence, lack of access to housing, the constant fear of lives being separated, destroyed by deportation, or just the trauma of having violent experiences, of having to leave one's own country, not out of one's own will, but out of necessity, working with people that have seen death, that have lost their children in a jungle, crossing a river, in the Darien Gap.
07:14:02 - 07:34:09
Jon Pedigo:
People walking across countries. These are people that we know. These are people that are our base. And there's this trauma that's happened. And so our work is, first of all, understanding the human reality that we are broken by this. And so, you know, when we talk about human organizing, it's not just jumping into an issue like if, I'm snapping my fingers, ha.
07:34:11 - 08:07:08
Jon Pedigo:
It's not like an issue of jumping into like, let's agitate people for change. Our work is doing trauma informed organizing, which is really addressing to understand the dynamic of broken realities, of broken dreams, of of separation and understanding that and and trying to pull out of that person their ability to see themselves not as a victim, but as a protagonist of their own destiny, which means that we we work and get people to move forward in that, in that place.
08:07:08 - 08:08:19
Jon Pedigo:
So that's a starting point we go to.
08:08:19 - 08:30:01
Lisa Petrides
Yeah. And I want to ask you about that. So I think what I've just heard you say is sort of talking about how faith is underlying this sort of driver, this very powerful driver of collective action and belonging. And I want you to speak a little bit more about community organizing, because I know that's really central to your work today.
08:30:03 - 08:45:07
Lisa Petrides
So if you could tell us a little bit about the organization that you work with - PACT - and you've already described how that work intersects with your calling as a faith leader. But tell us a little bit more about that. And, and, and how you carry out this work.
08:45:08 - 09:18:01
Jon Pedigo:
Okay. Before I do that, before too, I just want to kind of make, a kind of a little footnote that the word faith is not understood in the same way by different religious traditions. And faith, for some, it's a subscription to Creed-le statements. For others, it's an existential stance before the universe. So, like, we work with Buddhists that don't have, a particular, subscription to deity or anything like that.
09:18:06 - 09:51:09
Jon Pedigo:
So, so. And we were the Unitarians that don't that really don't have a specific God to which they worship. And then we also work, obviously with traditional Christians, Jews, Muslims. But when we work in interreligious spaces, as with, faith leaders, we understand that, you know, we're working with multiple religious traditions and what we try to find as what's that common piece around that sort of going back to what my work is, we try to understand what's that healing factor?
09:51:09 - 10:34:06
Jon Pedigo:
What's that healing dimension in that tradition? How is that lived out? How does that experience of being in this particular community that has rituals, that has, prayers or sacred texts, sacred practices or special practices that foster a healing process and that that bring people together that talk about the power of gathering and the necessity of bringing all people together, that we this is the kind of work that we do because we see those ancient technologies as ways in which we can create spaces of healing and spaces of self-empowerment and discovery.
10:34:08 - 10:55:19
Jon Pedigo:
When we kind of create committees, they're often created out of a particular faith tradition. But these different committees that are in each community, different faith communities, because we work with faith communities, they work with Unitarians, are working with Catholics, are working with Jews and working with different, Buddhists and working with people that don't have a particular spiritual home, per se.
10:55:21 - 11:21:05
Jon Pedigo:
And we're all working on this together because we're looking at the values that we belong to. These faith communities. It's great. It helps us understand who we are, gives us identity, a place and location, as it were. But more than that, it allows us to see the inherent love and community and goodness in others. And so that's that's kind of what community organizing is able to do.
11:21:06 - 12:09:18
Jon Pedigo:
It kind of fosters that, that radical hospitality and that radical listening. When we do that in a faith setting or at a setting in a church or a synagogue or Gujarat or whatever, you know, faith community, we are all across the board of different, different spaces. When you do that, you are kind of creating this moment for people to really express themselves as how they how they feel.
They want to express it. Right. You know, like a, a Baptist is going to be certainly differently expressing himself or herself or themselves than differently than a Catholic from Honduras. And so that we just kind of we as organizers, we just, we just create that space for dialog and understanding. And we try to and we work towards what, what do we have in common.
12:09:19 - 13:45:06
Jon Pedigo:
We don't kind of create find issues that would separate us and put us further into the corners. But we see what are the common realities, and the common realities are always about what's happening in our lives. What's preventing us from participating fully in society. What's preventing us from being our full, authentic selves in school or in a in a workplace or in, you know, even in our own communities, what's really going on.
And so we look at PACT to people acting in community together, that we're in 22 different congregations, and we're in Santa Clara County from Gilroy all the way up through Sunnyvale. We've given workshops and talks in Palo Alto. So it's we cover the entire county. We are currently working on four different campaigns, two very big ones, and two other smaller ones are on the back burner.
But there's still going the the two primary ones are, affordable housing and immigrants. And particularly the specific issue we're looking there is is assuring that due process is covered for all immigrants, regardless of their immigration status and or their ability to pay for a lawyer that in this country, we have, we have our our fundamental belief is due process.
And part of that is one is, is being able to be represented in the court. And then we have also, public safety, which is, you know, obviously just, you know, parks, relationship to the police, you know, violence, you know, cleanliness, traffic safety, those are part of that public policy kind of cover.
13:45:06 - 14:07:17
Jon Pedigo:
And then the other one is mental health, and that's kind of intersecting. We're fighting right now, especially with mental health crises brought on by the militarization and the military occupancy of, of different cities. That makes everybody very fearful. And we have people that are very afraid to, you know, go out to eat, go to church, take the kids to school.
14:07:23 -14:34:17
Jon Pedigo:
Kids are are not going to school as much right now. So we're seeing, just the performance, the education performance is really definitely, related to the increased presence or the threat of presence of ICE in the community. So we are very well aware of that. But we have in the past, we've had education. Education reform has been part of PACT's issues along with it.
14:34:18 - 14:45:18
Lisa Petrides
It really seems, as you were talking about this and of course, myself as an educator, all that you're talking about, I know it's about community organizing, but so much of it seems like it's a it's a form of education, right? That that.
14:45:18 - 14:45:23
Jon Pedigo:
It really is.
14:45:23 - 14:54:05
Lisa Petrides
Reorganizing itself. Is that right? You're teaching people how to connect and belong and and build resilience together.
14:54:07 - 16:04:22
Jon Pedigo:
Exactly. One of the things we do for education that we continue to do even now? It's not a specific campaign. Is most of our people are moms. Most people are making under $50,000 a year. We have one zip code where the average wage of, Latinos is at $20,000 or less. A lot of them are, amas de casa, are housewives.
Their, their partner works 2 or 3 jobs. And so their primary job is to make sure the kids are in school, that they're doing their homework. And these are moms that are monolingual and often have a, you know, have not really had a lot of experience talking to, teachers. And so we work with our leaders are, you know, learn how to, kind of work with teachers and work with the moms and getting them to show up at PTA meetings and getting them to show up in spaces like that.
So that's what can be organizing does even without a particular issue campaign around education. It is bringing leadership to people's lives and, giving capacity, a developing capacity in people to really, truly show up in all spaces.
16:04:24 - 16:36:16
Lisa Petrides
I love what you've talked about in terms of building these deep partnerships across faith traditions. We can think of a lot of examples where that is not encouraged or allowed, which seems ridiculous in some ways. Because we're all living here together. And how do we do this? But how do you you know, I guess from maybe more of the inception of why you do the work you do, but why is this interfaith collaboration essential to building these kinds of resilient communities?
16:36:18 - 19:38:01
Jon Pedigo:
Well, I want to go back to your original question about living in this broken time. Faith has been hijacked. It has been misappropriated by the far right. In fact, in all fascist regimes of the modern era from the 1900s to today, the rise of authoritarian style leadership comes in a, by taking a thin veneer of religiosity and claiming moral high ground, claiming to patria and, and moral good and all of these kinds of things are kind of melded together and they've, they've created these, these forces like Franco's Spain, we're looking at, we're looking at obviously Hitler.
We're looking at a number of other regimes that the present, the modern Russia, Central American, leadership, South American leadership. And in this present United States, the rise of authoritarianism is is through the misappropriation of religion. And so it's really, really important that just your meat, potatoes, religious people that go to church understand what's happening to their own communities, their own religions, and how it's been how it's been kind of taken out of out of its appropriate context.
So it's very disheartening to me to see religious leaders from mainstream churches, including me, in my own tradition, my own Catholic tradition, where they, in a sense, visibly and verbally apologize for and support figures and people in power that are associated with the rise of authoritarianism. It's very disheartening to see that it's confusing to people.
But I think with the advent of with social media and just a lot of conversations, which is what can the organizing does, we create these spaces for neighbors to speak to neighbors and parishioners to speak to parishioners and people to speak across different race, racial, ethnic, economic lines. And these conversations are happening all over the place where people are recognizing, wait a second, this is not our conversations are yielding a very different conclusion than what I'm being taught by either reading it in the paper or hearing it on mainstream news, or being heard preach from a pulpit that there's something else that's here that that we need to understand. And so people, when they're connecting people to people, they're starting to see through this, this BS.
19:38:03 - 20:03:18
Lisa Petrides
Yeah I mean I kind of want to say what is it these that these faith traditions could be doing differently today to sort of rebuild trust and nurture belonging. And I love that we're seeing that in the work that you do. There's so much that's not happening that way is there's some other places that others can start. And and I have another question too.
I'm just going to throw it in, like throw it in.
20:03:18 - 20:04:01
Jon Pedigo:
Throw it.
20:04:02 - 20:16:21
Lisa Petrides
Yeah. And how do you reconcile those contradictions in your work? Right. With your training and your background? How do you reconcile those contradictions? And then I'm kind of asking, what can the rest of us do, right?
20:16:23 - 20:21:22
Jon Pedigo:
Okay. Well, I am not the best example. I wasn't raised Catholic. I was raised kind of Buddhist.
20:21:24 - 20:23:16
Lisa Petrides
Okay, tell me about that.
20:23:18 - 20:56:02
Jon Pedigo:
So yeah, my mom was Buddhist and my dad was he was Protestant, you know, Baptist slash Methodist. And they made a decision that that my brother and I would have to make decisions about what kind of religion we want to identify with. And so we were we were kind of free to choose. And, my mother, I remember her asking me, we used to have a go back and forth.
She says, why, of all the religions, you could have picked the most conservative, small minded. And I said, because, mom, it pisses you off the most. But, the.
20:56:04 - 20:57:19
Lisa Petrides
All the good choices we make.
20:57:21 - 24:41:05
Jon Pedigo:
All the good. Your parents. Right? No, it was. But, you know, for myself, when I was in college, I was, you know, it was in the middle of the Civil War in Central America. And what really struck me was I asked myself, who are the people that are really, really trying to to bring change here? And I just, you know, was reading about Oscar Romero, Saint Oscar Romero, reading about the Jesuit martyrs.
I was reading about the Maryknoll lay missionaries, the four women that were beaten and raped and killed. These are the people not to not to romanticize their deaths, but to realize that these people really were not in it for political movement. And so for me, it was like, what is it that these people are doing? So from the very beginning, I was kind of steeped in this really curiosity around liberation theology.
So I had read that even before I was even Catholic. And then later in, in grad schools, when I when I started to get into being a Catholic, and then I was in a small base community in grad school, and then after that I was took some time to discern and, what I really wanted to do with my life.
And, when I went to the seminary, I got to meet people like, the late Frank Norris, who is a progressive theologian, got to meet people like Monseigneur Boyle, who was my great mentor for many years, and he was part of the farmworker movement. So I got to meet the Chavez movement, the farmworkers movement early on, worked with labor, worked with it.
Then it was called the National Conference of Christians and Jews got to meet Jewish people and other Catholics that were interested in inter-religious dialog and what we do to work together. So throughout my formation, I was really exposed to a type of Catholicism that was more active in the world, very what they call the Vatican 2 Catholicism, that was very much interested in community organizing.
Partnering with labor, looking at partners and not just as doctrinal agreements. So I worked early on with people with religion and no religion, and that was kind of my early training. Now, of course, the churches in the time had gone much more regressive and more traditional then we have a couple new popes that are more progressive, but maybe locally there's this kind of a trend towards a traditional Catholicism in response to and I think a reaction to the progressive dimensions of Catholicism.
So it's just sort of like, you know, you just have to kind of what's your what's your anchor in this whole piece? And my anchor to me is connection to the divine, doing the meditation work I do, being connected to people that are, on the margins and the fringes of society. So I felt that that kind of work was more suited for my vocation than you're waiting in the sacristy for problems to come to me. But I felt that it was more important for me to enter into the world, to work with communities in the inner religious communities. And as long as I can keep on doing that, that's great. I really feel this is the call that I have, and it fits with my background the best.
So that's kind of where I feel I need to be. So, that's kind of where I find myself. And so that kind of work is translated into my own work and community organizing, where we ask people to make the same kind of process process of discovering their own journey to be protagonists and not just to be victims or, you know, of, of circumstance or just kind of passively accepting whatever fate has before them. But to really engage in it, to not turn away from the world, but to face it head on.
24:41:07 - 25:14:06
Lisa Petrides
So you've shared how essential it is to be out in the world where face to face with people and building community in real spaces, you know? But at the same time, I know that you do sermons online and you connect with people through Facebook, which of course is a digital platform. So how do you see that balance? Like what are the risks and what are the opportunities when spiritual work and community organizing move into these online spaces? You know, where so much of our attention is on a screen rather than in a room together?
25:14:08 - 29:40:24
Jon Pedigo:
Sure, the use of technology in organizing and in ministry I guess because I'm not doing it necessarily as Jon Pedigo, the executive director of PACT, when I do my Sunday rants on your face. Okay, but I, I'm doing it as me, as a person, as a human being who is just sort of like, has something or want to say something.
It's like, I have nothing, you know, anything big, I don't think, but it's I have a few folks that do watch and they interact. And so to me, technology is great in a sense that it's creating opportunities for conversation so that people can go back to ILR, you know, in real life. And we want people to connect because that really is the core of religion.
Religion isn't just sort of a consumption consuming something online and looking at it, but it's about that interconnectivity. It's forming this human bonds. So to me is like, whatever I say is to get us back into the world. Now, the challenge around that is that people are not always follow through folks. They just are taking what they're looking at and then they leave.
My tradition is always saying, what's the next step? What are you going to do? Community organizing says, what's the next step? What are you going to do? It's a it's a question of transformation. What are you going to do now that you've been in this conversation? How is it changing you? How is it transforming you? What are you going to do? Here is a problem...I think with the religious folks and what's going on around faith communities and technology right now is you have personalities that are driving for likes and recognition that you could tell there are certain personalities, religious personalities that are very famous and well known in the religious world, and they're interested in clicks. They're not interested in the conversation to getting you back into the community or you back into the world.
But when you don't have a community that you're kind of imbued in their lives, if you're not connecting to them, you can. It's easy for a religious leader to fool themselves into thinking, hey, I'm doing my job. I'm up here doing this great thing. I'm in my nice vestments. I'm giving my little talk. People are thanking me for the talk, and then that becomes a reward in and of itself.
But where is your. Where are you walking? Like I remember for me, we did this thing called mass on the, it, it was on the it was a strike, right. You know, on the on the strike. So we we were in a hotel in front of this hotel, and we actually had a mass right there on the street, on the picket line as a mass on the picket line.
We had a, you know, procession with songs with a mass. We had communion, we had the readings. It was all there for the workers. Many of them were Catholic, Filipino workers. And they were just like, wow, this is very, very cool. I was working with the labor union doing this thing. It was an amazing witness to show that the divine, that their work is holy work and that was really great. Now we didn't think to sit there and take videos and put it posted on there or anything like that, like I suppose it could have been really helpful, but it was more important for us to kind of stand with those workers in a very specific space to recognize that we're there to lift up their souls and to keep them strong and encourage them that this is the right thing to do. If I was at it from a technology point of view or from social media point of view, if I that was really great. I wish I could have seen it online.
Yeah, but would that have helped you get involved in in worker rights, would you have, you know, done that yourself? Would you have yourself have given money to these workers who are losing, you know, who are losing money because they're they're out there on the line. What what would that how would you have helped? You know, so it's like, yeah.
So I'm not there to entertain. I mean, that's not what we're doing and that isn't what we're supposed to be doing in churches either. We're not supposed to be entertaining people. We're supposed to be inspiring people to get them to talk to each other and to commit themselves to some damn action in the world. But to sit there and to entertain them, it's kind of like a circus poodle. And that is not what religion is supposed to be.
29:41:01 - 29:42:12
Lisa Petrides
Yeah, I think I.
29:42:12 - 29:42:24
Jon Pedigo:
Mean, I've.
29:43:00 - 29:56:16
Lisa Petrides
Seen, we've seen yeah, yeah. So we've seen a lot of those cases where religion has failed communities. Right. It's it's fueled exclusion. It's it's fueled injustice. Right. Yeah.
29:56:19 - 30:51:08
Jon Pedigo:
Like the like have you seen those like mega mega church things where they have the pastor comes kind of floating down on a string, and it's all these gimmicks and it's like a show every Sunday, and people are waving their hands and bowing and, oh my God. And I'm just thinking like, sweet baby Jesus, is this what we are reduced to?
Did did this Palestinian Jewish dude, you know, walking the dusty roads of Palestine? And did he die on the cross so that some pastor with a goofy bouffant hairdo can come floating out of the top of, you know, on a crane, to loud guitar music to pump these people up and then, you know, talk about crazy right wing stuff. Is is this what this is? This is. No, that is not religion. That is a show. And Americans love shows.
30:51:10 - 31:05:02
Lisa Petrides
Yeah. So I have to ask this, you know, in, in a, in an honest way. So in this time, right of crisis of what you've seen, you just gave an example that we know so many people have bought into. What gives you hope?
31:05:04 - 35:50:14
Jon Pedigo:
You know what gives me hope is the other day we had a bunch of women who were monolingual Spanish speakers who were very, very frightened about, you know, their prospects of, you know, being picked up any time that they had their that some of them had their work permits and some didn't, but they were on a call with lawyers who were coming up with an idea of here's how we're going to help do universal representation. We have these ideas. We're going to just do this and we want to get your opinion. And these women are saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're the ones that are directly affected. We need to be at the table where we talk about the problem and work together to figure out a design that works to fit what we're at.
So a community driven solution that even in the midst of all of this chaos is happening, there are these women who are courageous enough to show up and speak, you know, to fancy schmancy lawyers as equals, as colleagues and not having to to to apologize for their not having a law degree. These women, many of them didn't finish high school in their sending countries.
They didn't have the opportunity. They didn't have the privilege of doing that. But they're super smart and they're very dedicated and they're extremely articulate. And I looked at the organizers and, you know, my my organizing team and I said, you guys did a great job to have these people to just to sit there, at that table and, and to me to give us hope is that there are these conversations from and we belong to this Pico, California, this federation of nine nine federations like PACT, but they're all from Crescent City to San Diego.
Everyone is doing are doing house meetings. They're having people listening to each other, having conversations in, in, you know, in parks and in front of the garage, in the backyard and at someone's living room. And they're talking about what are the issues that we're facing today around, you know, censorship, around losing, losing jobs around, you know, losing your health care, around what we see, what ICE is doing.
And they're having these amazing conversations. And there's, you know, in the end of this campaign, there'll be 10,000 people that have had participated in these home conversations, these dining room table conversations, and being able to take from those conversations here are the top issues that are coming up all across the board and being able to say, this is it.
And we're capturing all of that and we're kind of showing that. So to me, that gives me hope is that we're aren't just taking it, you know, laying down. I look at Nepal, what happened in Nepal. These are young people that are rising up out of small base communities that are working together and being able to topple a government that was absolutely authoritarian and corrupt, that I look at other, other things that are happening around in other parts of California.
We have faith communities. We have a bishop in San Diego that says, I'm going to have my priests go to ICE detention facilities when people have their check ins. And I want to be sure that everyone that's there has some priest or a layperson or a parish community that is there to witness with them and support them. And in the case of being detained, there's someone's going to be there with that family.
And we're documenting these cases. We're seeing what's happening where we are not normalizing oppression. We are logging it. We are posting it, we are talking about it. We are remembering it. So that gives me hope. I think the fact that I work with so many people that are that are really susceptible to detained detention and, and so and, and I look at how courageous they are and saying, you know, I have to fight this because if I don't know what's going happen to my kids and my my grandkids and they're these are people that they had enough and they're not hiding anymore.
They're just saying, we are going to work on this and we're going to talk to our kids about what's important. And little kids are learning not to just go and open the door. I mean, so everybody's learning what to do, you know, in, in these households where there could be some problems, every everybody's learning how to do this together.
And that gives me hope that no one is giving up. No one's giving up. We are working harder. We're gathering. We're listening, we're marching. We are plotting, we're planning, we're conspiring. We're working together. We're creating policies from the grassroots. This is the power about it.
35:50:16 - 36:34:09
Lisa Petrides
Yeah. It's beautiful. Thank you. You know, just kind of in closing, I want to say so to me, what you've just described, you know, the the name of this podcast is Educating to Be Human, right? And if educating to be human is about learning how to belong, to act, to care, all those things that you have just talked about, what do you think is most essential for us to carry forward?
You know, into the future? And and I want to say it's for those families you're working with, but it's for all of us, right? It's, I think it's something that we're all kind of call to action now, but what do you think is most essential for us to carry forward from this into the future?
36:34:11 - 37:32:19
Jon Pedigo:
I think that we, you are kind of hit on a couple times is really the sense that we belong to each other, to remem to to remind us that we are we are covenanted to each other, but it comes from a deep place of a broken femur that's been healed, that we that is a sign that we are taking the time to care, to care for each other, to walk no faster than the slowest member of the community.
And that the goal isn't efficiency, it's authenticity. And that we're learning a lot of other kinds of things, and we're creating that environment, where people can flourish and discover and be curious. And that's the most important part, that belonging to each other is super, super important. And I hope that I know that your audiences, a lot of them are educators and I, I, I, as I say, I serve my time by being a seventh and eighth grade teacher for a while. So I.
37:32:24 - 37:34:12
Lisa Petrides
You were a seventh and eighth grade teacher.
37:34:12 - 38:22:09
Jon Pedigo:
That I did, I did music and religion...just two thing that people just know that. Yeah, well, I don't know, but, I, I think to me, what's really powerful is that educators understand that it's not a job. It is a calling and it's creating those spaces in classrooms and learning environments. And I just hope that we can work hand in hand as community organizers and educators, because we are trying to create that safe space at home and, you know, at school and, and being consistent so that kids can be authentic and kids can be curious and that teachers can feel safe and doing what they're doing and respected.
38:22:11 - 38:27:09
Lisa Petrides
Yeah. Thank you.
38:27:11 - 38:40:20
Lisa Petrides
Before we finish, I always like to leave space for one final question, something I ask all my guests. Can you make up the title of the book that you wish more people would read?
38:40:22 - 39:06:07
Jon Pedigo:
A catechesis of organizing. You know, it's or a catechism of organizing. It's sort of like, how do you hat are the steps and and showing people how to go from step to step and, here's how you can do it. And you do not have to be a Cesar Chavez or Dolores Huerta, or a Doctor King or Mahatma Gandhi.
39:06:09 - 39:14:22
Jon Pedigo:
You can just be who you are. And it's something that everyone can do and follow the steps in this book.
39:14:24 - 39:42:15
Lisa Petrides
Thank you for this conversation today and for reminding us, at a most basic level, what it means to be human that we heal the the broken femur, as I believe Margaret Mead said. And thank you also for your incredible work in community organizing, especially during difficult times. It's a powerful reminder that being human is about how and why we show up for each other.
39:42:17 - 40:03:10
Lisa Petrides
Thank you everybody for listening to the show this week. This has been Lisa Petrides with Educating to be Human. If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can access our show notes for links and information on our guests. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram!
40:03:10 - 40:48:15
Lisa Petrides
Blue Sky at Edu to be human, that is Edu to be human. This podcast was created by Lisa Petrides and produced by Helene Theros. Educating to Be Human is recorded by Nathan Sherman and edited by Ty Mayor, with music by Orestes Koletsos.
