For 4 weeks over our Sunday Service hiatus the Social Justice committee hosted a Summer Movies Series where welcomed members, friends and guests from our community in exploring in a deeper context the social justice issues affecting many in our community, such as the criminal justice system, affordable housing, race relations, and childhood trauma.
Week One: We viewed The Brave New Films titled Racially Charged: America’s Misdemeanor Problem. The film exposes how our country’s history of racial injustice evolved into an enormous abuse of criminal justice power. 13 million people a year – most of them poor and people of color – are abused by this system. Through first-person accounts of those charged under the Black Codes of the Reconstruction era paralleled with the outrageous stories of people trapped in the system today, the film brings to light the unfolding of a powerful engine of profits and racial inequality.
We welcomed Jay Williamson from Showing Up for Racial Justice Vashon/Maury Islands. He shared his experiences working within the legal system to assist people wrongly convicted or imprisoned and provided resources for taking action.
Week Two: We viewed A Matter of Place | Fair Housing Justice Center. The Fair Housing Justice Center partnered with Kavanagh Productions to produce the film “A Matter of Place”, a documentary film that shines a light on housing discrimination, one of the most shrouded and misunderstood civil rights issues in America. The film connects past struggles for fair housing to contemporary incidents of housing bias based on race, sexual orientation, disability, and source of income, and presents three stories of people who faced housing discrimination in present-day New York City. Through experts, civil rights advocates, and fair housing testers, the film also recounts our nation’s often overlooked history of residential segregation and introduces viewers to systemic and pervasive injustices that, despite the existence of fair housing laws, continue to inflict harm on entire communities and individuals throughout America.
We welcomed Morgan Brown, chair of the community council’s Vashon-Maury Affordable Housing Committee, who shared factors that go into the lack of affordable housing on Vashon.
Week Three: We watched the PBS Documentary The Riot Report: A Presidential Commision defied expectations by telling the hard truth. When Black neighborhoods in scores of cities erupted in violence during the summer of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders––informally known as the Kerner Commission––to answer three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? And what could be done to prevent it from happening again? The bi-partisan commission’s final report, issued in March of 1968, would offer a shockingly unvarnished assessment of American race relations––a verdict so politically explosive that Johnson not only refused to acknowledge it publicly, but even to thank the commissioners for their service. The Riot Report explores this pivotal moment in the nation’s history and the fraught social dynamics that simultaneously spurred the commission’s investigation and doomed its findings to political oblivion.
Week Four: Dr. Nadine Burke Harris Ted talk on how childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime. Pediatrician Nadie Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. Dr. Burke Harris shared a research study called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study done by Dr. Vince Felitti at Kaiser and Dr. Bob Anda at the CDC, where together, they asked 17,500 adults about their history of exposure to what they called “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs. Those include physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical or emotional neglect; parental mental illness, substance dependence, incarceration; parental separation or divorce; or domestic violence. Dr. Burke Harris’ talk is an impassioned plea for the pediatric medicine community to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on. To learn more about ACE or to take the quiz visit: ACE Quiz – CDC Ace Website.
We welcomed Dune (a.k.a Cathy DeSmet) from Standing Up for Social Justice Vashon/Maury Island who shared resources for our community to engage and support those who are affected by childhood trauma, see below.
Voting, volunteering, and financial support of organizations fighting for social justice reforms emerged as consistent themes, from all of our speakers, as a way to be an active and engaged advocate for those suffering from these social justice issues.
Resources for our community who are interested in learning more about how they can participate.
Jail Reform
People Power Washington NW ACLU
Healing Childhood Trauma
1. Local resources include VYFS and the Dove Project.
2. Health Care District is funding mental health and a mental health provider for Vashon secondary schools. Attend a Health Care Dist. meeting to advocate.
3. Thunderbird Treatment Center will provide equity and have a larger impact on our local region.
4. Vote supporting vulnerable populations so that screenings, pre-school, parent education is available.
5. Equitable Future Vashon is piloting tutoring programs in the Vashon schools. There’s a Reading Buddy program at Chautauqua and a math tutoring program at McMurray. To volunteer email:
6. Journeymen (serves males) and One Village (all genders) offers school circles and builds a sense of community and belonging. They offer mentoring, rites of passage, and leadership training for VHS students.
