The group will be similar to Congregations United for Community Action, begun in St. Petersburg 10 years ago.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published October 17, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - In a new initiative, religious communities across Pinellas County are coming together to launch an interfaith effort to address common concerns.
More than 700 Christians, Jews, Muslims and people of other faiths are expected to gather at Bethel Community Baptist Church in St. Petersburg to set an agenda for the new organization, elect officers and decide on a formal name. The new countywide coalition, spearheaded by a national grass roots organization that helps communities work for social, racial and economic justice, will hold its inaugural meeting on Nov. 15.
For now, the effort is being referred to as the Pinellas Organizing Committee, a group focused on recruiting clergy and lay members from religious bodies across Pinellas County. Co-chairs, one from each end of the county, are the Rev. Robert Schneider of Espiritu Santo Catholic Church in Safety Harbor and the Rev. Clarence Williams of Mount Zion AME Church in St. Petersburg.
"Our intent, our hope, is to bind individuals into community ... which will result in increased trust of each other, caring for one another and mutual assistance," Rabbi Arthur Baseman said.
"We hope it will result in supportive parents that are involved in their schools, in neighborhoods that will be free of crime and blight and improper conduct and will result in neighbors that know each other. We will create a community that will work for the common good," said Baseman of Temple B'nai Israel in Clearwater.
One of the advantages of the new group, organizers say, will be its diverse religious makeup and geographic sweep. The coalition of believers will be able to bring "the weight of the entire community" to the causes they put before county leaders and politicians, said Williams, the St. Petersburg pastor.
"From speaking with people all over Pinellas County, I've found that people in the south county want the same things as people in the north county. They want good schools. They want safe neighborhoods. They want nice parks. They want all of the services everyone else does. The south county is lacking in some of these things that the north county has. It's a matter of allocation of resources," he said.
The new organization will be similar to Congregations United for Community Action, the grass roots St. Petersburg group founded more than 10 years ago, Schneider said.
"We have a good relationship with CUCA. They know what we're doing and they're very supportive of us. Right now, we are parallel organizations with common goals," said Schneider, who until last year was based at Holy Family Catholic Church in St. Petersburg.
The two groups have similar origins. Like the new countywide group, CUCA was organized by the Direct Action and Research Training Network or DART, which initially provided it with a trained, professional organizer. DART has done the same thing for the Pinellas group, whose organizer, Haley Grossman, has an office at Most Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Gulfport. Grossman's salary is now being paid by the fledgling Pinellas County group. Energetic and influential in its early years, CUCA's membership has now dwindled to about four or five congregations and a handful of volunteers who are working to keep it alive.
"What happened with CUCA was CUCA was able to sustain itself for eight or nine years after DART (organized it), but then ran short of money and then wasn't able to have a professional organizer anymore," said Jim Barrens, a former paid organizer for the group and now executive director of the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo University.
Meanwhile, this month several members of the Pinellas County organization traveled to Dayton, Ohio, for a DART workshop designed to help them as they launch the new initiative. So far, about 20 congregations have signed on to the effort that began in the summer of 2003, Schneider said.
Participants will set the group's agenda at the November inaugural meeting, he said.
"I don't know what our issues will be," he said. "We have no preset agenda."
