Each of these experiences confirmed her desire to impact the larger systems at play in communities.  In 2009 she was hired onto the recruitment staff  of the DART Organizers Institute, where she recruits highly talented individuals into the field of community organizing.  From 2011 to 2013, she also worked with a group of Topeka clergy interested in seeing their churches unite to address local justice issues.  The organization born of this effort is known as the Topeka Justice and Unity Ministry Project.

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In 1982 he was commissioned Pastor of Rhema Christian Center having begun that work with seven members. The church has grown profoundly and is making an impact in northeast Columbus, Ohio. The church has assisted in establishing six local congregations and developed Dayspring Christian Community Development Corporation providing affordable housing and economic opportunity for low-income families.

La Fayette has ministered to men across the United States and throughout the world. He is also a charter member of the Fellowship of Inner City Word of Faith Ministries (FICWFM).

Through the Network of Local Churches, La Fayette is recognized and set in the Church as an Apostle and functions in that capacity to many leaders, churches, and ministries locally, nationally, and internationally. La Fayette has ministered throughout the United States, Canada, Israel, Zimbabwe, Russia, South Africa, Australia, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Fiji, Peru, Ecuador, and Singapore and throughout the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia and the Dominican Republic.

He has authored two books, What is the Church Coming To and It’s The Walk Not The Talk, as well as numerous manuals, articles and papers to strengthen the church and train leaders. In May, 2003 Pastor Scales received an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Beulah Heights Bible College in Atlanta, Georgia.

La Fayette resides in Columbus, Ohio with his wife, Theresa and their children, Jonathan & Nataria Scales, their two children Marques and Mia, Marshall & Yolonda Ziglar, and Christopher.

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About 2,100 people turned out Monday night for a diverse interfaith event at St. Matthew Baptist Church that marks a turning point in the nascent Charleston Area Justice Ministry.

It was called the Nehemiah Action Assembly, named for the biblical cup-bearer to the Persian king who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem despite intense opposition and helped restore the city’s Israelite community.

The local Justice Ministry, which has adopted the methodology of a Miami-based group called the Direct Action and Research Training Center, has chosen to focus on two main (and interconnected) social ills: inadequate early education and juvenile detention.

The Justice Ministry, which at its core is an alliance of about 20 congregations, seeks to influence public policy. Participants want to convince public school officials to make pre-K programs available to all 4-year-olds and to institute juvenile justice reforms so young, nonviolent offenders have a better chance of bucking the statistics.

At a preliminary rally, about 600 people learned about the issues and promised to “step up by showing up and bring three” to Monday night’s action. To judge by the full sanctuary, they succeeded.

Ready to read

In attendance were Mayors Joe Riley and Billy Swails, Police Chiefs Greg Mullen and Eddie Driggers and Carl Ritchie, Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon, Solicitor Scarlett Wilson and Charleston County School District Superintendent Nancy McGinley, among other public figures. North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey sent his chief of staff.

The Rev. Daniel Massie of First (Scots) Presbyterian Church explained the vision of the group — “We are good at talking about justice but we need to do justice” — and announced that organizers hope to double participation next year.

Education Committee member Shantell Scott of Morris Brown AME Church stated the problem: “Thousands of children are reading below grade level,” she said. “Many children are behind even before they begin school.”

Rabbi Stephanie Alexander of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim explained that proven solutions exist, citing examples, and Angel Oak Elementary School teacher Kent Riddle described his successful early education efforts, soliciting applause.

The Rev. Charles Heyward of St. James Presbyterian Church then asked McGinley if she would implement a research-based literacy curriculum for all child development classes beginning fall 2013. She said she shares the goal but achieving it depends on funding.

“It’s absolutely a matter of resources, not resolve,” she said.

Will she monitor progress of all students beginning in pre-K through third grade? This is already done, she said, but starting in kindergarten.

Will she share information with the Justice Ministry? Yes. Will she propose to the school board to expand child development programming by 225 students by the start of the next school year and increase capacity to serve all Title I schools by the following year? She hedged, explaining that there was a $10 million funding gap, and that the current 5-year plan would introduce 100 new seats each year. The citizen group would not relent. McGinley said there are only three ways to fund such programs: raise taxes, get more state funding or cut other programs. She said other issues come into play, like overcrowding. Eventually, she agreed to set the proposal before the board.

Then it was law enforcement’s turn.

Intervention

Maxine Frasier Riley of Morris Brown AME Church offered some sobering statistics: 66 percent of those jailed will not graduate high school. In the U.S., $10,500 is spent per child each year on education; $88,000 is spent every year on each child incarcerated.

The Rev. Nelson Rivers III of Charity Missionary Baptist Church asked three questions of Ritchie, Mullen, Driggers, Cannon and Wilson.

Will you serve on a task force to develop a plan to reduce juvenile detention in Charleston County 65 percent by the end of 2014? Ritchie, Driggers and Cannon said yes, though Cannon said communities should commit to getting 65 percent of their children to church, too. Mullen and Wilson agreed but would not commit to a number, calling it arbitrary.

If nonviolent offenders were not detained, that alone would reduce rates by 80 percent, Rivers pointed out.

Then he asked if they would agree as task force members to have a report prepared in time for the Community Problems Assembly in October. All but Mullen, who would not make promises without knowing everything involved, said yes. Finally, Rivers asked them to attend the first task force meeting within 30 days, and all said yes.

Rivers then announced that Department of Juvenile Justice officials also had committed to serving on the task force. Then he turned to the law enforcement officials and, on behalf of the Justice Ministry, pledged cooperation.

“The evidence of our support is before you, 2,000 strong,” he said, provoking more applause.

Riley called the event amazing. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said, adding that early education was the key, that it also helped solve the problem of juvenile detention.

“If out of this we can get strong community support for early childhood education, this will have been the best meeting ever.”

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Fifteen zip codes in the Toledo area are designated as high-risk areas for exposure to children of lead paint, and a local non-profit agency is urging city officials to adopt strategies to help prevent lead poisoning in those areas and throughout the city.

Toledoans United for Social Action hosted a meeting tonight to bring officials up to date on the many children in Toledo who are affected by living in homes where lead paint is prevalent. In 2008, 208 Toledo children were diagnosed with lead poisoning and 55 percent of children at risk for lead poisoning were not tested. More than 100 people attended the meeting, held at Friendship Baptist Church on Nebraska Ave.

“Lead is a devastating, secret, silent problem,” Robert Cole, an attorney for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, Inc. “And the solution is not to wait.”

A map presentation by David Norris, senior researcher at The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, revealed that the central city is one of the main areas where older homes with lead paint exist.

“In Toledo, the central city especially, the housing was all pre-1970,” he said, noting that lead paint was commonly used until 1978. He said low property values, combined with the frequency of lead paint is often a recipe for disaster.

During the meeting, officials said that special education costs increase for school districts that have students who have been consistently exposed to lead paint and experience developmental issues because of it. In addition, they said, some studies have revealed correlations between exposure and negative behavior.

Mr. Norris said students who have a blood level of between 2-10 ug/dL can cause “persistent cognitive damage in children.” But when he said that “no level of lead in a child’s blood is acceptable,” the audience burst into applause.

Children with levels of lead in their blood can exhibit symptoms such as stomachache, headache, tiredness and anemia, according to the Ohio Department of Health’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.

The most common way children are exposed to lead is by ingesting chipped paint. Mr. Cole said children between 18 months and three years are particularly at risk.

Toledoans United for Social Action members referenced two cities – Rochester, N.Y., and Greensboro, N.C. – as examples of cities that were able to decrease lead exposure through community activism.

But the group also had a request for Mayor Michael Bell and Toledo City Council President Paula Hicks-Hudson. The organization asked that each commit to doing three things: work with Toledoans United for Social Action to develop an ordinance by Sept. 1 that would hold landlords accountable for complying and verifying that rental properties are lead-safe; meet with the group within 30 days, and also attend the annual conference in November.

Both accepted the challenge.

Mayor Bell said finding ways to help landlords pay for abatements on rental houses that contain lead is crucial to making the ordinance work effectively.

“This is not just an issue for this group. This is an issue for the community,” he said. He said he would like to work to find solutions that won’t compromise housing for families who rent.

Ms. Hicks-Hudson also encouraged the value of planning ahead.

“It’s easy to pass legislation, but the implementation is going to require a lot of work and ingenuity,” she said. Councilmen Shaun Enright and Joe McNamara, Deputy Mayor Steve Herwat and officials from Toledo Public Schools, including interim superintendent Romules Durant, also attended the meeting.

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More than a thousand members of local congregations joined forces inside the John Paul Jones arena to make an “impact.”

Every year members of IMPACT, or Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together, focus on finding a solution for one problem.

This year they’ve been working with the Charlottesville and Albemarle County government along with other local organizations to address homelessness and job training opportunities for young adults.

“We are just really thankful for our community leaders and the…agencies and organizations that have agreed to the solutions we have put forth tonight and we thank them for just coming out and making public commitments to those solutions. So it’s been a great night for IMPACT,” said Dorothy Jordan, IMPACT Co-President.

IMPACT has also been working with UVa and Martha Jefferson Hospital in an effort to create training to provide jobs to young people. The groups were not at the meeting but have told IMPACT of job opportunities and will be meeting with IMPACT.

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The University of Virginia Medical Center, Martha Jefferson Hospital and Piedmont Virginia Community College made a commitment Monday night to help 3,000 unemployed young people in the Charlottesville area get jobs.

After a period of study by the Interfaith Movement Promoting Actions by Congregations Together (IMPACT), the school and hospitals agreed to start a program that will provide scholarships for qualified students to work towards careers in healthcare. The initiative was announced at IMPACT’s annual Nehemiah Action, a gathering of about 1,800 people from 26 congregations. Each year, IMPACT reports the progress of its past year’s initiative and gathers commitments to combat a new problem.

The unemployment rate for people between 18 and 30 in the area is 14 percent, said Kristen Schenk, who coordinated the study for IMPACT.

“I work on a daily basis with the [underemployed] and unemployed, but I was still surprised to see a 14 percent unemployment rate among our people between 18 and 30,” said Juandiego Wade, chairman of the Charlottesville School Board and a professional career counselor. “Consider this collaborative a benefactor to thousands of young adults.”

“Some basic upfront tuition assistance is often the first step to getting people in the door and up the career ladder,” Schenk said. “Many of these young people lack access to training programs after high school to get them on the first rung of the career ladder.”

Besides tuition assistance, the program will provide job coaching and mentoring, transportation and childcare to those who do not have their own, and the opportunity for apprenticeships.

Marie Fisher, a nurse’s assistant at UVa Medical Center, said that financial aid was instrumental in getting her where she is.

“Just one year of job training or community college — that is the tipping point for getting people out of poverty,” she said. “I tell all the young people I know to pursue careers in healthcare, because that’s where the jobs are.”

IMPACT took the first steps to finding solutions to homelessness Monday night, getting Charlottesville and Albemarle County to agree to a roundtable meeting to discuss the problem with People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry (PACEM), Region Ten community services board and others to coordinate an effort to solve homelessness.

There are more than 700 homeless residents in the Charlottesville area, at least 500 of whom are children, IMPACT officials said. In the county, the number of homeless children has ballooned by 650 percent, IMPACT said.

The organization pointed to a lack of coordination between service providers in the area, including the city of Charlottesville, Albemarle County and Region Ten. Group leaders said their goal by the fall is to have a common measurable goal for all of the organizations to work toward.

“We don’t want to tell them what that goal should be,” said Kim Wilkens, chair of the IMPACT Homelessness Committee. “We want them to identify those goals and report back to us at the Fall Assembly.”

The group also hopes to help establish a system to help service providers better take advantage of federal money available for programs against homelessness.

“We know that groups in our area are leaving money on the table because they are not collaborating enough,” Wilkens said.

Sarah Kelley, a local pastor who was homeless as a youth, asked the congregation to have compassion for the less fortunate.

“It’s easy to say they need to get a job when you have a job and all your necessities to stay in one place. Don’t look down on anyone, unless you are looking down to pick them up,” she said. “You never know, but you can end up homeless through no fault of your own.”

Dorothy Jordan, IMPACT co-president, told the assembly that hopes and prayers are not enough to affect change.

“We do not seek to start service projects or charities, we seek changes that get to the root causes of community problems,” she said. “We do it because preaching sermons about justice is not enough. Praying for justice is not enough. Complaining about injustice is not enough.”

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More than 1,000 people packed the main floor of Memorial Auditorium on Monday night for the annual action assembly of Citizens of Louisville Organized and United Together.

People from varied religious congregations across the city combine their influence under the CLOUT acronym each year to seek commitments of action on issues of social justice from local officeholders.

This year’s action items were jobs for ex-criminal offenders and funding for the Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

“Tens of thousands of people in the Louisville metro area have difficulty becoming self-supporting because of some criminal charge on their record,” the Rev. Larry Sykes of Greater Good Hope Baptist Church said.

The whole community is affected financially “as we secure the cost of prosecuting and incarcerating again persons who have never been able to make a positive, productive start in rebuilding their lives due to a criminal record,” Sykes said.

CLOUT is calling on the Louisville Metro Council to enact an ordinance making the city a “ban the box” location, getting rid of checkboxes on initial job applications that ask whether a person has a criminal record.

Council members David James, Rick Blackwell, Attica Scott and Cheri Bryant Hamilton, along with Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell, were asked individually at center stage whether they would sponsor and support on ordinance banning the box by the end of this year in city job applications and the job applications of contractors doing business with the city.

The council members all said yes. Blackwell said, “Metro government already does not have the box” as a matter of choice. “What we’re looking to do now is make it official.”

But O’Connell, who was asked whether he would lead an effort in the 2014 General Assembly to reform the state’s record expungement laws, said he would help but not lead on that issue.

The county attorney explained that his priorities for that legislative session are the opening to the public of juvenile and family court proceedings.

CLOUT also called on those officials to support creation of a dedicated $10 million annual funding source for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund through a 1 percent increase on insurance premiums or some other means.

The council members at the meeting previously sponsored an insurance ordinance, but it foundered after O’Connell said dedicating money from the premiums would be unconstitutional.

The organization has since asked Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway to provide an opinion on the constitutionality of dedicating the funds to the trust fund.

The council members all recommitted to supporting insurance premiums as a dedicated source of funding if Conway says it is constitutional or to work to find another dedicated source of funding if he does not. O’Connell said he would defer to Conway’s opinion when it is issued.

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WEST PALM BEACH — Palm Beach County schools have seen their out-of-school suspension rate drop by 25 to 30 percent this year, and Superintendent Wayne Gent said Monday he hopes to cut it even further.

Put on the spot by the community group People Engaged in Active Community Efforts, Gent agreed to have the nation’s 11th-largest district set a goal of having no school with an rate of more than 10 percent.

“That’s a very challenging goal,” Gent allowed after he was applauded for agreeing to it by many in the crowd of about 2,000 at the South Florida Fair Expo Center.

In the 2010-2011 school year, the district had several schools with suspension rates of 30 percent or higher — meaning that, in some cases, a third of the student body was suspended at least once.

“We’re robbing them of their right to an education,” said Edith Tucker of Belle Glade, who told the group her son was suspended for three days in middle school for chewing gum in the halls.

The district has been overhauling its discipline policies and recently updated its student code of conduct to try to correct behavior problems before resorting to punishment.

The changes were sparked in part by a 2009 settlement with civil rights groups over complaints the district was too often suspending emotionally or behaviorally disabled students. The district also has settled with the U.S. Department of Justice after a probe into its suspensions of students who struggle to speak English.

Gent credited the district’s efforts for this year’s drop in suspension rates.

“I look forward to looking for solutions with you,” Gent told the crowd.

The PEACE event came the same month that the California-based Civil Rights Project released a new study looking at suspensions at more than 26,000 middle schools and high schools nationwide.

That study estimated that one out of every nine secondary school student was suspended at least once during the 2009-2010 school year, often for minor infractions.

It also found that suspension rates for certain groups has grown disproportionately between 1970 and now. For instance, it said the suspension rates for black students increased 12.5 percentage points in those three decades, compared with only a 1.1 percentage point jump among white students.

The study was co-written by Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for CivilRights Remedies at the California-based CivilRightsProject. Losen was also a co-writer on a 2010 study that found that Palm Beach County ranked No. 1 among 18 large, urban school districts nationwide in how often they suspended black male middle school students in 2006.

The study mentions the Justice Department settlement with Palm Beach County, saying it “offer(s) concrete examples of viable changes that any district can undertake.”

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This was no ordinary church meeting. It was the largest and most diverse interfaith gathering the Charleston area has seen in decades.

The unusual size of the crowd, about 600, surprised the Rev. Nelson Rivers III of Charity Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston. It surprised the Rev. Danny Massie of First (Scots) Presbyterian Church. It surprised the Rev. Jeremy Rutledge of Circular Church.

So many people streamed into the sanctuary at St. James Presbyterian Church on James Island for the rally that extra chairs had to be unfolded in the aisles. Signs taped to the ends of pews indicated where each congregation should sit.

Many churches and one synagogue were represented. Wallingford Presbyterian brought 17 people; Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church brought a dozen; Holy Communion had 21. Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim brought 24. The Unitarian Church had 55. New Tabernacle Fourth Baptist had 18.

They kept coming, for this was a seemingly pivotal moment in a new effort to address social ills in the community. Religious leaders, along with their congregations, were taking the bull by the horns.

They have formed a new organization called the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, hired a director and adopted the methodology of a Miami-based group called the Direct Action and Research Training Center, or DART.

‘Bring three’

The Justice Ministry has been ramping up for a year. It began as a small cluster of clergy who met to find common ground. They engaged members of their respective congregations, began to build relationships and started the process of ascertaining community concerns. This was the first step, the “listening phase.”

The second phase was the “research-to-action process.” More people were engaged. Committees were formed. Problems were assessed. Stakeholders and policymakers were identified. This led to a big meeting at Blessed Sacrament Church at which participants settled on two pressing issues — education and crime — then went off to conduct research, hold meetings with school and law enforcement officials and begin to prepare for the third phase.

“It is a very democratic process, almost by necessity,” said the Rev. Joseph Darby, Justice Ministry co-president and a presiding elder of the AME Church.

Various houses of faith, each with its own set of views and priorities, are involved. So it is important to target issues around which a consensus can be built.

As organizers gathered information, it became clear that ensuring all children receive a quality education was critical, according to Massie, who has been involved from the start. Studies show that third-graders who are not yet literate are significantly more likely to lag behind and falter in school, and they also are more likely to get in trouble with the law. The correlation between early childhood education and prison rates is clear, Massie said.

As the Justice Ministry efforts intensified, so did interest among congregations. The April 8 rally at St. James Presbyterian Church served to take the temperature of this nascent faith-based movement. Many clergy and laypeople addressed the gathering, offering encouragement and updates, and promising to bring others to the next event, the Nehemiah Action, scheduled for 7 p.m. April 29 at St. Matthew Baptist Church in North Charleston. The mantra was: “Step up by showing up, and BRING THREE.”

If each participant of the rally succeeds in bringing three others to the action, attendance will exceed 1,500. Joining the April 29 assembly will be school and law enforcement officials, legislators and community leaders, including area mayors Joe Riley, Keith Summey and Billy Swails, police chiefs Greg Mullen and Eddie Driggers, Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon and Charleston County School District Superintendent Nancy McGinley, according to organizers.

Good tension

About 20 congregations are officially involved in the Justice Ministry. But that number is likely to increase, Massie said.

It’s essential to boost the momentum and transition to the sustainable action phase in which investments can be made and pressure on policymakers applied, Darby said.

“This can’t be a rally to rally, it’s got to be ongoing,” he said, adding that it has to result in the building of an influential grass-roots power base.

At the April 8 rally, education committee member Cynthia Smalls told attendees that the Justice Ministry would push the school district to provide preschool education to all 4-year-olds in Title I schools. She said the ministry would promote implementation of a research-based curriculum and ask officials to track children’s progress through the third grade, a key turning point for young students.

All children in the region deserve a quality education, she said. “Geography, race and income should not matter.”

Frank Hardie, co-chairman of the crime and violence committee, cited some miserable statistics. More than half of juveniles who are detained eventually are jailed as adults, he said. Children who drop out of high school are far more likely to get in trouble with the law than those who finish their schooling. Nonviolent young offenders too often are corralled in the Charleston County Juvenile Detention Center with violent offenders, who are bad role models and expose children to dangerous ideas and lifestyles.

It is not uncommon for a 12-year-old arrested for a minor nonviolent offense to be jailed with a 17-year-old violent criminal, Hardie said.

The crime committee is talking with the Charleston Youth Development Center about finding a way to help young people who have run afoul of the law stay in school and avoid a life of crime, he said.

Rabbi Stephanie Alexander said that the group likely will encounter some tension as it asks policymakers and legislators to change the status quo. But tension sometimes is necessary for change to occur, she said.

“We (all) want what is best for our city and its residents. Our job is to bring the brokenness to light,” Alexander said.

Playing catch-up

Jerod Frazier, a 37-year-old activist, law student, minister of social justice at Charity Missionary Baptist Church and member of the crime and violence committee, said the meetings he has attended have been well-organized discussions.

“The energy is palpable in the room,” Frazier said.

Not only does the committee pore over data and other information, it records its discussions and rehearses its presentations. So when representatives meet with policymakers, they are efficient.

“We are on point, we have done the research,” he said. “We’re not pointing fingers, we’re presenting problems. We are essentially their think tank.”

The Rev. Bruce Jayne, a retired chaplain and a member of the education committee, was involved in a similar interfaith effort a few years ago, but it fell apart due to procedural and theological disagreements. Jayne said he was surprised at the lack of major obstacles this time around and credited the success of the Charleston Area Justice Ministry to its clear focus and common purpose and to the framework provided by DART.

“I’ve been here 23 years in this area,” Jayne said. “This is the first time I’ve seen any real result of churches working together across denominational lines. The beneficial, long-term side effect of this movement is it’s bringing the faith community together in a real way.”

Everyone agrees that education is the key, he said. If early childhood education is widely available and juvenile detention mitigated, then the high dropout rates will be attacked from two directions, he said.

“We just need to play some catch-up ball; we’re in a society that’s held back a significant part of our population by reducing their opportunity to have decent incomes,” Jayne said.

But it’s a long process, he said.

Churches and synagogues historically have done a good job with their “mercy ministries,” providing emergency aid to those in need, “but that doesn’t address systemic issues that cause people to live in poverty in the first place.”

This new Justice Ministry, which is tackling the causes of poverty and crime, probably will expand its scope in the years to come and, hopefully, provide a model for other South Carolina cities, Jayne said.

“Over time, we are going to see some significant change here,” he said. “It’s not only going to help poor people, it’s going to help the whole state.”

Where self-interest lies

DART, founded in 1982, works with about 20 organizations, including the Charleston Area Justice Ministry (which is soon to become a standalone nonprofit). About half are in Florida, where DART is based. Its recruiting institute is in Kansas, and its training center is in Ohio.

Local groups decide for themselves what issues to tackle and DART provides organizational framework, said John Calkins, executive director.

It also offers a biblical justification, drawn primarily from Micah 6:8, which reads: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

“To do justly” is something nearly all people of faith can agree on, he said. Hot-button social issues such as abortion and gay marriage are avoided in favor of education, health care, crime and justice, unemployment, discrimination and more.

Treva Williams, the 36-year-old director of the Justice Ministry, moved to Charleston from Kansas last June after completing DART training and apprenticing as a fellow for five months with the group called BREAD (Building Responsibility, Equality and Dignity) in Columbus, Ohio.

Williams thinks of herself as a facilitator; she doesn’t dictate, she stands by as local faith leaders call the shots.

“The reason this works is because the work is done in the congregations, and the local people, the lay leaders and clergy, are the ones doing the work,” she said. “We try very hard to build relationships, to recognize where self-interests lie, and why it’s better for all of us if the city is more just.”

By 2015, the organization will include 50 local congregations. That’s the goal, she said.

Through the Justice Ministry, residents of the Lowcountry can gain a voice and influence public policy, she said.

“We tend to hand over so many things in our lives to the experts, and then so many years later wonder what happened.”

By 2015, the organization will include 50 local congregations. That’s the goal, she said.

Frazier, a former police officer who once was arrested on a violent offense but exonerated, said he has gained sympathy for people who are struggling to get by and respect for those unafraid to speak truth to power.

Change, he said, is necessary. Too many young people are stigmatized by criminal records and poor education. Too many lives are wasted or destroyed.

“So now our focus is to bring the message to leaders who want change that we will support you, we have your back,” he said. “And to those who don’t want change — we will not be silent.”

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