Eli Poore is one of the newest UU Class Conversations’ Steering Committee members. They bring a grounded perspective in the ways we can better serve those with less class advantage and new ways to bridge class divides.
By Eli Poore
I’m currently serving as an intern minister for the Southern Oregon UU Partnership, which includes congregations in Ashland, Grants Pass and Klamath Falls, Oregon.
For the past eight years, I’ve been involved in an ongoing street ministry/community development project with communities experiencing poverty and houselessness through a nonprofit organization that I co-founded with a friend and mentor to support our work, Coastal Bend Community Empowerment. The work with the unhoused community has been particularly successful. It began with the “Unsheltered Voices Listening Project,” funded in part by the UU Funding Program, and involved utilizing a relationship-based community organizing framework centered on the gifts and goals of the community to mobilize and make change. We were able to unify and mobilize community members and through a listening process identified goals that were important to this community.
This project has grown into a wider initiative to end houselessness citywide, and now involves interfaith groups, housed partners, service providers, and is supported by city and county leaders. But the voices of the houseless neighbors remain at the center. They have come together to partner on neighborhood beautification initiatives and monthly beach cleanups in partnership with other groups. Additionally, they have held fundraisers that provide direct support to unhoused community members for things like obtaining IDs, temporary housing, busfare, etc.
Building Equitable Relationships
I completed a community ministry internship that sought to build relationships between housed and unhoused neighbors, moving into more relational frameworks and out of one-sided charity frameworks, which perpetuate power imbalances. I also served as a founding board member, and Director of Community Development, overseeing a small paid staff and volunteers in our wider community development and training iniatives, which included poverty simulations and “power shift” and “mission shift” trainings for churches and nonprofits.
I have experience in organizational development, strategic planning, fundraising and marketing in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. I am also involved in the trans UU professional group “TrUUst.” During my involvement on the TrUUst board, we have secured and increased our funding from the UUA twofold, as well as developed a wider fundraising plan involving support from members and congregations.
During seminary, I had my own marketing and web design business, specializing in web development, marketing and social media management for nonprofits and small businesses.
I’m also involved in the national leadership team of Faith in Harm Reduction, which promotes harm reduction initiatives grounded in a faith-based perspective. Harm reduction practices include safer use supplies, but also things like housing first and centering the voices and perspectives of people experiencing structural violence in an intersectional way. My doctoral program is focused on building a theological framework for harm reduction practices, and I aim to create a UU Harm Reduction Coalition in time.
“I have a love for developing and growing organizations and organizational systems, and I think that class issues should be discussed more robustly in our denomination.”
Class Issues in the Real World
Class issues are important to me for a number of reasons. I come from a working class background and have been directly impacted by classism, poverty and my experience of houselessness. I’ve confronted classism directly not only in UU congregations but in the wider world.
I also experienced class issues in the context of carceral systems, being formerly incarcerated too, seeing how race, class and other identities come together in the likelihood of an individual’s contact with carceral systems as well as the outcomes of that contact, which perpetuate intersectional disparities and has for decades now devastated whole communities. I’ve seen how my privilege as a white person has manifested in all of these experiences, providing a boon for me in some aspects, as well as the way classism has presented through systemic, interpersonal, and personal disadvantages and biases.
Why do I look forward to serving on the UU Class Conversations Steering Committee? I have a love for developing and growing organizations and organizational systems, and I think that class issues should be discussed more robustly in our denomination. This is particularly important given the general demographics of most UU congregations and organizations which skew white, educated, and middle to upper middle class. This can leave out many who have much to give to our movement.
