Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

On April 8, a faith-based group from San Francisco, California made its seventh pilgrimage to Alabama. The visit, part of the organization’s transformative learning program, was a stop in Lowndes County aimed at helping people learn about social justice and how one organization is working to bring equity of services to Lowndes County residents.

Black Belt Unincorporated Wastewater Program (BBUWP) President Perman Hardy and Executive Director Sherry Bradley have welcomed the group for four years, showing visitors the program’s work toward bringing properly-working sewage disposal systems to local residents.

“This is their fourth visit from California,” Bradley said. “It’s an educational trip, an awareness-raising trip. Some of the students have only lived in the city, so our wastewater disposal issues are new to them.”

Rabbi Michael Lezak works with the Glide Foundation in San Francisco, leading the organization’s transformation learning programs. The group brings between 50 and 100 individuals on each visit to see impacts of racism on Alabama’s people.

“I am a rabbi and my wife is a rabbi,” Lezak said. “The pilgrimages started when we went to the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum in Montgomery. Some members of my wife’s congregation helped us to think about racism in healthcare, like, ‘What is racial justice?’ and ‘What would health equity look like?’ We built relationships with people at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB) and they connected us with many people across the state, including Ms. [Perman] Hardy and Ms. [Sherry] Bradley.”

Glide is an historically Black, Christian church with a large social service agency in San Francisco. Lezak said 85 people made the first pilgrimage to Alabama, and that first trip ultimately led to subsequent trips into Lowndes County.

“We want to understand the challenges,” Lezak said. “We want to meet people who are wildly creative, creative and courageous, to try to help bring solutions. I work to find great teachers and great souls and hold onto them. When I met Ms. Bradley and Ms. Hardy, they inspired me and our people regularly tell stories about what they learned in Lowndes County.”

On the group’s first visit, Bradley took visitors to see basic and engineer-designed installations. On their second trip, she showed them effluent discharge systems, those working without the need for field lines.

“We showed them some living conditions, and that really threw them for a loop,” Bradley said. “We are helping them understand what is going on in our communities. They want to see who’s working to help people.”

Glide pilgrims always visit DeepWoods Restaurant for lunch while in the area and visit homes where wastewater on the ground has been a problem.

“They bring us out to sites where either there has been a septic tank installed or one needs to be installed,” Lezak said. “We talk about what it means for people to live without the dignity of a toilet that flushes into the ground, and we try to show love and compassion. Then, we try to think about creative partnerships where our people on the ground here might partner with Ms. Bradley or folks at UAB.

“The Glide Foundation makes spaces for people to feel deeply, and we work with people who spend a lot of time in their heads, not enough time in their hearts. I’m a rabbi who works with a historically Black [Christian] church. I’m not trying to convert anyone, but I do think spending time in your heart and feeling and seeing the image of God and people who are living without dignity… I feel like its our responsibility to take care of our fellow brothers and sisters no matter where they fall on the economic spectrum, what they look like or where they pray.”