The following link, takes you to a “utopian” article, entitled “Home of the Brave?” which I wrote and appeared in the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/s...

John Steinsvold

But the idea is a wonderful one. I would like to see Sojourners devoting more resources to this kind of effort, and to stay away from partisan politics.

Great stuff, but somehow this initiative needs to be coordinated with activities that already ARE addressing homelessness and childrens' schooling, like Family Promise.

In Sacramento California, the buzz this year has been about the Oprah's special on our “tent city” of homeless – weekly articles or programs in the media, recounting efforts to secure stable housing or tent sites for several hundred homeless. Some 1,200 individuals are thought to be living “outside” in Sacramento.

What these discussions have neglected is the fact that, according to the Sacramento County schools office, some 6,200 children were homeless in 2007-08, up dramatically from 3,800 just five years earlier. The county’s homeless are increasing four times faster than its general population, and whereas three of every four were “sheltered” in 2005, only two of every four are sheltered today. Of the growth in homeless, families with children are by far the fastest growing component. A national study in early 2009 reported that one in 50 American children is homeless.

Despite this tragic situation, few local shelters for the homeless provide a safe haven where families are kept together. Sacramento’s Family Promise is an example of one of these few. This program takes in homeless families – children with mothers and/or fathers – and while keeping them together, helps them achieve self-sufficiency and regain a home, employment (if necessary), self-confidence, and return them to society’s mainstream. It's a national model, with 125,000 volunteers in 148 local affiliates – 11 in Texas, though none in Dallas.

The genius of Family Promise is that it relies on a huge voluntary component of people and facilities in a network of local area congregations, where families are housed and fed overnight, enjoying the evening hospitality of a church or synagogue, where these facilities would otherwise go largely unused. During the day, the children are helped to school and parents work to secure housing, jobs, training, health services and the like from the Family Promise programs' day centers.

While there needs to be fruitful interfaith discussions of the problems of homelessness and its impact on children and their schooling like that in Dallas, such discussion needs also to incorporate awareness of existing effective solutions like the Family Promise program.

1) Tom Leppert is not “wildly popular” with people who live, as I do, in the working class areas of southern Dallas. To my neighbors, who are mostly people of color, he's just another white North Dallasite backed by big business interests. If he performs something of substance through Justice Revival — such as getting some business investment in southeast Dallas, including a decent grocery store that ISN'T Wal-Mart — then we might be persuaded that he actually does represent us.

2) I don't see any reference in your post to the many Progressive and Progressive Christian organizations that have been working on justice issues in Dallas for as long as I've lived here. I'll be checking out the Justice Revival web site to see if a comprehensive list of participants includes representation from these hard-working, longstanding groups.

Thanks for your time and attention.