MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
Greetings:
The Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network (PIIN) is delighted to be on the ground organizing for the preservation of human dignity, the protection of human rights, and the promotion of social justice. We are able to do this through the common foundational principles of our faith traditions. PIIN through it’s variety of congregations have and continue to organize around local, state and national issues. As one of the many faith-based community organizing projects within the Gamaliel Foundation we are proud to note that one of our own organizing disciples is the current President of the United States of America – Barack Obama.
At the heart of our organizing methodology is the value we place on personal relationships. Through our one-on-one conversations we are able to uncover individual self interest and build a base of people around common interests. Our success is in our understanding and our ability to articulate what power is and what power can do. Power in the right hands and with a communitarian objective changes things; power in the wrong hands corrupts. According to Saul Alinsky, “Power is not just what you have but what your enemy thinks you have.” He also states, “Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.”
We understand that what we do at times may create friction but this friction will only come about through direct action, which is always preceded by unsuccessful negotiation. The purpose of direct action in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” In the end, we hope to be instrumental in creating a community where discrimination and racism have been defeated, where walls of segregation have been demolished and where healthy interfaith, inter-cultural, and interracial relationships can be developed.
Rev. John C. Welch
President
