DEFINING REFORMATON CHURCH CHICAGO'S TOURISM JUSTICE MINISTRIES

1.  The overall name of our ministry is REFORMTION CHURCH-
CHICAGO'S TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY JUSTICE MINISTRIES (RCT&HJM).  Our order of services are divided into the following three sub-ministries:

A.  Replicating the up until now exclusive tour of Forgotten Chicago, the City's alternative historic and architectural landmark publication, headed: "Chicago & The Rise of Barack Obama 1985-2008 (in which our Church played a key racial and social justice role)" to benefit the ministry of our heretofore under-supported (inside and outside the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America/ELCA) historic house of worship especially but by no means exclusively. 

We envision organizing at least a monthly Sunday tour (if not weekly) where Reformation Church-Chicago, at the heart of the historic Roseland/Pullman community on the Far South Side, is a featured tourist destination.  We are therefore in the process of requesting and securing the ongoing moral, active, and financial support of both the ELCA's African Descent Ministries Program and CHOOSE CHICAGO, the City's and State of Illinois' umbrella tourist agency, serving in the public-private-partnership sector, with the immediate aim of building, maintaining and developing our unique Young Barack Obama South Side tour as important aspects of both ELCA African Descent Ministries Programming as well as of CHICAGO CHOOSE's in- and out-reach work. 

B) A second initiative of RCT&HJM is organizing into a permanent coalition a cross section of the South Side community forces participating in the November 10th, 2015 Palmer House meeting mentioned below.   We propose to organize this group under the banner of REFORMATION CHURCH-CHICAGO'S SOUTH SIDE COALITION FOR TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY JUSTICE (REFTICE).  

Our coalition will seek to collaborate with the African American Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco, Black Meetings & Tourism Magazine, and the NAACP in formulating a Black Tourism and Hospitality Justice Agenda for the City of Chicago.

C)  A third initiative of RCT&HJM is that of building a Black tourism and hospitality justice alliance of the National Black Evangelical Association (NBEA) headquartered here in Chicago.  The emerging NBEA alliance is being organized along lines similar to the South Side coalition envisioned above.

With this post we are hereby in the process of requesting and booking separate meetings with ELCA African Descent Ministries Program Director, Rev. Albert Starr and CHICAGO CHOOSE CEO, Mr. Don Welsh, ASAP, to discuss jointly implementing item 1A above especially but not exclusively.

Respectfully submitted:  Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma) for Reformation Church-Chicago's ("Young Barack Obama's community organizing sanctuary") legacy tour headed: "Chicago & The Rise of Barack Obama 1985-2008," Plus, 11-30-15-Updated.

Text & phone contact: 773-499-3323.  

NOTES: BEYOND THE CURRENT BLACK COMMUNITY INTERVENTION IN CHICAGO'S 2016 NFL DRAFT

1.1) Just in case no one has noticed, beyond the Tuesday, November, 10th concerned Black community, clergy, and laity-led intervention at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel (aimed at ostensibly fostering cooperation with the upcoming 2016 NFL Draft Extravaganza here in Chicago) exists the real proverbial goose that lays the golden egg of perpetual economic stimulus i.e., the multi-billion dollar Chicago Tourism Industry of which the NFL Draft event is but one of its latest expressions.

1.2) This blog is created to focus concerned Black faith- and community-based attention on the greater cause: that of intervening in Chicago's Tourism Industry to the end of garnering our fair share of the City's tourism revenue to which African Americans-inside and outside Chicago-contribute.  Such revenue is largely already generated by the City of Chicago and State of Illinois' existing hotelier industry taxes.  

1.3) This said our challenge is that of participating in the process of more equitably redirecting the already existing tourism tax flow to rightfully serve (as an important ongoing source of economic stimulus) Chicago's underserved Black communities. 

1.4) First, kudos to Pastor Anthony Williams for convening Tuesday's important ice breaking gathering.  More, following his call for immediate outcomes, beyond "feeling good," we of historic Reformation Church-Chicago ("Young Barack Obama's community organizing sanctuary") propose our group form an immediate coalition with Choose Chicago, the umbrella tourism industry organization of the City and State-inclusive of the 2016 NFL Draft project, to organize a series of South Side history tours generally, the Far South Side particularly.

1.5) Specifically we propose, in association with Reformation's existing friends of Forgotten Chicago, the City's alternative history and hidden architectural treasury reporters, to routinize and better market their unique Sunday, November 8, 2015 past bus tour headed: "Chicago & The Rise of Barack Obama/1985-2008" that recently visited our Church.  This important but embryonic South Side Chicago legacy tour is ostensibly focused on "visiting the landmark sites of Barack Obama's early career in Chicago featuring authors and community activists who worked with Obama one year to the date before the 2008 presidential election" inclusive of the social ministry of Reformation Church-Chicago. 

1.6) The path breaking yet still experimental Obama bus tour, basically planned as a Sunday, 10AM-4PM event, starts "at the Chicago Cultural Center, includes lunch at Valois in Hyde Park, visits (Reformation Church-Chicago/'Young Barack Obama's community organizing sanctuary'), Altgeld Gardens, Pullman, Hyde Park and other historic sites." 

1.7) Heretofore, one of the best kept secrets of the 130 year old Reformation Church-Chicago is its unique history based on the following three distinctions outlined below:  First, from 1985-to-1988 plus Reformation Church-Chicago served, via its social ministry, as the community organizing sanctuary of young Barack Obama, his fledgling Far South Side neighborhood organization, Developing Communities Project (DCP), and its then parent organization, the Saul Alinsky inspired Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC).

1.8) Second, Because of its young Obama legacy, Reformation Church-Chicago is now uniquely positioned to play a contributing role in the formation of the envisioned Community Organizing Institute of the forthcoming Obama Presidential Library and Archive.  While the Obama Presidential Library will be based at University of Chicago, its envisioned Community Organizing Institute is slated to be based at Chicago State University on the Far South Side near Reformation. 
More, Reformation's current Jazz Vespers Ministry to Chicago's Africana artists and activists communities, aimed at creating a sanctuary for said constituencies, is consistent with our young Obama grassroots organizing legacy and positioning. 
  

1.9)  Finally, Reformation Church-Chicago's sanctuary was designed by George Pullman's architect, Solon Spenser Beman-the architect of both the historic Pullman factory and Pullman Houses.  Reformation also served as the original church home of the Swedish craft-men's workforce of the Pullman Sleeping Car Manufacturing Plant.  Accordingly, Reformation is integrally related to the historic Pullman community (recently designated a national monument and park by President Obama).   The above said, Reformation's sanctuary is at once a forgotten and/or underappreciated architectural treasure, engineering marvel, and Chicago labor history landmark in need of a bold, social movement supported, restoration campaign.

1.10)  To sum up:  We at Reformation Church-Chicago propose that a key immediate outcome of the recent Palmer House meeting (between the NFL Draft 2016-Chicago representative, Mr. Peter O'Reilly, Choose Chicago, CEO Mr. Don Welsh, and the select gathering of concerned Black Chicago community forces) be that of organizing a series of South Side history bus tours generally, Far South Side history bus tours particularly as an integral part of the existing gamut of Chicago's tourism offerings. 

1.11) We further propose, in collaboration with Choose Chicagoand Forgotten Chicago, to routinely organize the historically important "Chicago & The Rise of Obama (1985-2008) Bus Tour" initiative as a revenue generating project to benefit the 130 year old ministry of Reformation Church-Chicago to the historic Roseland/Pullman community on the Far South Side.

Respectfully submitted: Pastor Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma) for Reformation Church-Chicago ("Young Barack Obama's community organizing sanctuary") , 11-13-15-Updated.

Contacts: Text: 773-499-3323.  Email: JKWASHINGTON@comcast.net.