Training for voting canvassing at St. Vincent’s Church with POWER Interfaith. (Photo: Maleka Fruean)

On a sun-filled day in early October, various folks gathered in Brother Al Center at St. Vincent de Paul Church on East Price Street in Germantown. Most were connected to POWER Interfaith, a social justice organization that leads community organizing through faith congregations. 

Organizers, volunteers, and religious leaders in their communities were all present to engage with neighbors and the community in person and on the phone, encouraging them to vote and then to work on issues around housing, safety, and education in our city after the election was over. 

Mishkan Shalom, Germantown Jewish Centre, St. Vincent’s, St Athanasius, Polite Temple Baptist, Germantown Friends Meeting, and First Presbyterian in Philadelphia were all represented in the room. 

Some folks were working on door-to-door knocking and in-person canvassing. According to the ACLU of Pennsylvania, if your group is not asking for donations or dues, you do not need a permit to canvass door-to-door. POWER organizer Basheemah Brown reminded volunteers of this. 

Brown set everyone up with information and canvassing tools. After some words from local organizers and a prayer centering faith, facing fears, and knowing we are not alone in the community, volunteers got to work preparing to talk to people. 

Some folks were working on phone banking, including Paula Paul, a Germantown resident and parishioner at St. Athanasius in West Oak Lane. Paul knew she wanted to get involved but couldn’t do in-person canvassing because of mobility issues. 

She caucuses and works at St. Vincent’s Church for POWER events and was waiting on details for scripts on how to talk to folks over the phone. However, she felt comfortable talking to people personally about her own thoughts on the upcoming election. 

“I just feel it’s an honor to vote for a woman of color. And I turned in my ballot yesterday, and I just feel so honored to have been able to do that because I never thought it would happen in my lifetime,” said Paul. 

Elizabeth Eagles was also in attendance to canvas in person. She has been volunteering with POWER for almost six years. She formerly worshiped at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and Reverend Carol Duncan introduced her to the group. They, like St. Vincent’s, were one of the founding congregations of POWER about 12 years ago.

Eagles remembers a priest once saying that even though the government can’t establish a religion, it doesn’t mean people of faith can’t influence the government. 

For her, this is part of her faith as a Christian. She believes her faith is inextricably linked with political organizing, primarily when it seeks out and centers the voices of those most affected by harm perpetuated in our society and helps mobilize healing around it. 

“The kingdom of heaven, the wholeness for the world that God wants for us… I feel like obviously there’s opportunities to do that every day in our interactions with each other, but also there’s this opportunity politically, especially in a democracy, to move the needle in the direction of healing the brokenness of our world,” said Eagles.

Eagles has also appreciated how she sees POWER organizing as more bottom-up than top-down, with the voices of folks affected by issues like displacement, violence, and other challenges centered. 

She says POWER is really focusing on strengthening and building its base to work on issues its organization has deemed important–deeply affordable housing, safety, equitable education, sustainable jobs, and access to quality healthcare. So even though they are involved in getting people out to vote and general voting engagement, they are more focused on building what comes alongside voting. 

Ethan Stein, POWER Interfaith’s paid community organizer for North Philadelphia, in neighborhoods like Hunting Park and Logan, agrees about the community building. He knows that voting is only part of the process and stresses that to the members he organizes with. 

Broadly speaking, he says that more voting equals a better and healthier democracy. But he wants to ensure that the organizing he does in neighborhoods also stresses the importance of people’s power after elections.  

“I think the part that most people are missing is the organized vote, the coalition building, being connected with your neighbors, is really where the power in voting is. And because that really becomes, I think, disenfranchised as a concept and really not an actualization for people, they see that voting doesn’t work for them, and they become disillusioned by it,” said Stein. 

Stein has heard many folks talk about new housing developments in their neighborhoods, whether they can even afford what is being built, and the disconnect to the neighborhood around it. 

He talks to neighbors in Hunting Park who tell him about drills they have in case gunshots go off in the neighborhood. He says these issues come up in conversations all the time, and he knows that this isn’t happening in neighborhoods with higher incomes and perhaps more political sway. 

The ultimate goal, he says, is to sway national and state elections and push the needle to policy change that works for the issues POWER is fighting for. 

“So my goal is to have the kind of people power that we build the kind of base that we’re connected with, enough neighbors, enough lay people in our congregations that we have enough force, enough demand, you know, enough bite behind our bark that we have that kind of influence,’ Stein said.

He continued, “And I’m thinking about the next election; we’re talking about the City Council people. That’s like the closest political position that really seems obtainable in terms of what we’re doing with POWER right now. And then from there, we just move on.”

On November 12, 2024, POWER Interfaith will hold a Northwest Philly Research Meetings Training for their Northwest congregations. The training will teach them how to hold strategic research meetings with elected officials to learn more about development and housing in Philadelphia. More details and information will be on their calendar. 

To learn more about civic engagement and other activities organized by POWER Interfaith, you can visit their website.