When a business owner in Mount Horeb, upset by the state of U.S. politics, wanted to provide an opportunity for like-minded residents to connect, one of the first things he did was enlist the help of two UCC pastors.
The business owner is Matt Raboin, owner of Brix Cider, a farm-to-table restaurant and cider maker and the man who hatched the idea for the project, called Reimagine Resistance. The pastors are the Revs. Tisha Brown and Brad Brookins, both residents of Mount Horeb. Tisha, a former associate conference minister, has worked the bar at Brix, and Brad and his wife are regular customers.
The idea is to create a space for people to share their thoughts, learn from others and imagine new ways to resist the assault on democratic values and institutions, while growing more resilient as individuals and as community. A first gathering at Brix drew 110 people.
Reimagine Resistance emerged from Matt’s conviction that traditional forms of protest doesn’t always get anywhere.
“Part of our problem is psychological – we’re feeling hopeless,” said Matt, who served in the Peace Corps in Tanzania and later worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development. “We need to feel more hopeful and part of that is gathering with other people. The ways we typically resist aren’t working and aren’t going to work. We need to reimagine it. We need to connect with people, not just scroll on our phones and get sad.” His thinking resonated with Tisha and Brad.
“If the conversation remains outrage at the national situation, we will fail,” Tisha said. “It will immobilize individuals from doing what they can to affect local communities.” Her hope is that Reimagine Resistance “might be forcing people out of their bubble, out of their Facebook stream.”
People connecting with people sounds a lot like what congregations provide, but Reimagine Resistance isn’t faith-based. Matt, who was raised Catholic, no longer considers himself a Christian, but “I still have some of those values.”
“My faith is in something,” he said. “And I want to be a decent human being.” He values his relationship with the two pastors.
For Brad, “people just being together is an antidote” to the anxiety of the current political environment. “People really do have a deep sense of spiritual reality and a deep need to experience it,” he said, stressing that he wasn’t talking about inviting people to church “but something much deeper than that. . . . “I have a strong belief in the power of people being together and loving each other. Over the next generations, that could change the world.”
What’s the ultimate goal of Reimagine Resistance? That’s not entirely clear. Let’s just say the journey is as important as the destination.
“I think my . . . answer is that we are cultivating a change of attitude from hopelessness to a belief that we can make a difference,” Matt said. “Another, harder, goal that I would hope to work on moving forward is to start breaking down the barriers that keep us from connecting with those whom we don’t agree with politically. We need to find new ways to speak to friends and relatives who, in my belief, have been manipulated into a very false and dangerous ideology.”
For more information about Reimagine Resistance, email Matt Raboin, Tisha Brown or Brad Brookins.