GCrevier's blog

Helping individuals successfully return to the community after incarceration in prison or jail is the mission of Circles of Support.* Through weekly meetings or individual contacts, volunteers from all walks of life meet with men and women who have been incarcerated to provide support and help to them in dealing with everyday challenges they face in returning to the community. The meetings provide a positive, non-judgmental environment which focusses on individual strengths and the future.

Information about community resources is provided by the participants and volunteers.  Discussions about challenges focus on problem-solving and helping individuals explore effective options that might work for them. Participation is voluntary and there is no cost. Success is celebrated.

A variety of meeting times and places are available in Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, and Neenah-Menasha. Participants describe the groups as a “caring family environment,” a place to get useful community resource information, and a non-judgmental, trusting and respectful setting that gives them hope.

Anyone interested in being involved as a participant or volunteer can connect by calling (920) 840-2918 or emailing circlescanhelp@gmail.com.  A volunteer will contact you personally to answer any questions.

*ESTHER is the fiscal sponsor of Circles of Support.

It was a shocking vote at last week’s Common Council meeting (4/21/21), when the Council sent back to committee the resolution addressing the increase in xenophobic, anti-Asian attacks in our country and the City of Appleton. After the courageous speaking out, especially by elders and then others, of the Hmong community – sharing their gut-wrenching experiences of fear after threats and harassment, the vote was in the hands of those who listened but did not hear.

A need that we all have when dealing with racism is to get out of our heads and into our hearts and the hearts of others. It is a letting-go experience. We need to respect the authors of the resolution that reflected the study, research, and words exposing the unsettling truths that give rise to fear in the Asian community. And yet some members of the Council offered intellectualizations to justify their opposition rather than to hear the trauma of the Asian community and to undestand the reasons why. Based on comments, tears and overall impressions given by members of the Hmong community after the meeting, they received the message that the Council would not support them in their fears.

Who are we to say that they need to ask for our support in a better way? Compassion, compassion, compassion.

—Gary Crevier, ESTHER President

Almost lost in the news of the gut-wrenching testimonies in the death of George Floyd is the equally horrific increase by 150% in the attacks and killings within our beloved Asian community in the past year. The killings of Asian women in Atlanta and the brutal attack on an elderly Asian woman on the streets of New York are only recent examples of this ongoing tragedy in our midst. Members of the Asian community in the Fox Cities are being harrassed as well.

And then there is the plight of the high percentage of missing and/or murdered indigenous women. Mark Charles, indigenous author of Unsettling Truths, adapted a diagnosis from psychologist Rachel McNair, who says that some perpetrators of crime suffer from Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stess (PITS). Charles suggests that we as a country suffer from the same trauma, a subconscious guilt after four-hundred years of genocide and slavery, and don’t even realize it.

How long will it take for us to face our denial as a nation? Growth in this consciousness within our community will occur when we are willing to face reality and see ourselves as part of our national systemic racism. We as members of ESTHER encourage all of us to realize that we can no longer consider ourselves to be “innocent bystanders” to what is happening in America today. Last week, Ron, a young South Korean, asked that we “be self-aware, speak up, ask questions, be genuine and have respect for everyone.”

Gary Crevier
ESTHER President

The question was asked of me, “Why do I involve myself doing justice work?” I think the beginning of my addressing systemic causes of injustices began when I found ESTHER – or was it ESTHER finding me? Even before ESTHER, values that formed me within led to my belief that my dignity can never be fully realized until the dignity of all including creation is respected and honored as well. Where did that come from? I wonder if it was not so much anything that I was taught but rather something that I caught.

The first time I went out into public places wearing a mask in the beginning stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, it was different. I realized that I could not recognize people, nor could they recognize me. What is more important than our individual identities is the identity of the common good. The good of my community and society requires me to filter out as much virus as I can by wearing a mask. It was Thomas Aquinas who wrote, “The common good of many is more godlike than the good of an individual.”

And what about racism? If it is like the air we breathe, then yes, we need filters, masks of humility, masks of justice, masks of respect that will protect us from repeating our long systemic history of oppression towards people of color. Just as there are those who don't wear masks to protect themselves and others from the virus because, in their minds, they feel they are somehow above it all, so too there are those who feel that they are not part of our systemic racism and are somehow above it all. What masquerade are you part of?