When Bob Nelson heard his pastor talk about a new faith-based social justice coalition in Wichita, he was wary.
“I told her this could be dangerous and divisive,” said Nelson, who initially associated justice with revenge or polarized politics.
After attending the initial meetings when Justice Together was forming in late 2022, he came to see it as a nonpartisan way to find solutions to important community issues. When he left a long career in health care in 2023, volunteering became a worthy cause to retire to, he said.
And then last summer, he and his wife needed to call 988 during a mental health crisis and got the help they needed through a mobile crisis unit he and other Justice Together volunteers had advocated for.
Justice Together’s first two initiatives were homelessness and mental health. Two teams of volunteers were formed to research and work with local officials to identify grassroots ways to address them.
Justice Together was the driving force behind Wichita’s rollout of a municipal ID last June. The coalition pushed for the ID to help the homeless and other vulnerable populations access certain services or get a job if they needed to show a photo ID. As of early May, nearly 3,100 applications were submitted for the ID, and more than 2,250 cards were printed, according to the city’s website.
Nelson was on the team that addressed mental health, advocating that COMCARE’s mobile crisis units be fully funded through more grant opportunities. COMCARE, Sedgwick County’s public mental health center, now has eight two-person mobile crisis units that can be dispatched 24/7.
For the Nelsons, the MCU — comprising a therapist and case manager — helped solve their crisis right in their home without needing additional first-responders like the police or needing to go to the ER.
In the lead-up to the early March vote on a 1% sales tax, Justice Together had endorsed the tax, but only because it would have helped fund Second Light, the city’s comprehensive services center for those who are homeless, and housing goals, said Rabbi Andrew Pepperstone, one of the co-founders of Justice Together.
Nearly 40 faith-based churches, congregations and parishes belong to Justice Together, according to Pepperstone, who made a ballpark estimate that about 500 community members are active within the network, participating in listening sessions and research teams. It’s one of six social justice organizations in Kansas that belong to the national Direct Action and Research Training Center.
Nelson and other volunteers, such as Corey Swertfager and Melanie Jenney, said they particularly like that Justice Together focuses strictly on local issues that come out of small-group house meetings and listening sessions among friends, neighbors, fellow church members and others in the community.
“Justice Together has been a game changer for me,” Swertfager said in an email. “As a board member, team leader and network member, I have developed strong friendships with dozens of folks across the county — people I may likely have never run into otherwise.”
“So far, we’ve avoided everything I was afraid of when I first heard the word justice,” Nelson said.
This year’s initiatives, announced at the coalition’s annual Nehemiah Assembly at the Hughes Metropolitan Complex, are gun violence and affordable housing. The assembly is named for a Biblical leader who garnered community support and solutions for social justice reforms while serving as governor of Judea.
During the late April assembly, Nelson found himself addressing the 1,400 people in attendance, talking about the efforts of Justice Together, much like his pastor had done at Aldersgate United Methodist Church a few years ago.
He told them how the work had become personal last summer with that phone call to the crisis line.
“You guys are my heroes because you did this.”
Contact Amy Geiszler-Jones at algj64@sbcglobalet. To find out more about Justice Together, its website is dojusticetogether.org
