What Can I Do: Building a Movement of Access & Involvement Today

So many people in America are asking, as they read the news, "But, what can I do?"

Here's our response.

If you've been getting our "Department of Connections" newsletters for a while, you know we have an Utah Wilderness Retreat each year. (If you haven’t and would like for these stories to be sent straight to your inbox, sign up at the bottom of this page.)

Every September, three men recently out of prison drive through the red rock wilderness of Southern Utah and fly fish, play in streams, laugh, look at the stars, talk about their childhoods and their children now, weep, and heal.

All thanks to our friend Dan Stoner, who has leveraged his access and property and personal story to open this holy tradition for us.

Southern Utah University (SUU)—we drive by it in Cedar City every year—got wind of this. They invited us to come speak at their campus lecture series last month. Turns out, SUU has a leading outdoor education department surrounded by national parks.

You can watch the video of the presentation. For those of you who are newer, I also speak a bit on the history of our organization. Overall, it's not just a slideshow of homies fishing but a call to action: hikers, fishers, hunters, and outdoor education programs can all help unlock access to these healing spaces.

They can do so by partnering with nonprofits and welcoming historically excluded people into healing places.

Here's the point that we at Underground try to broadcast:

You don't have to do full-time social work to be part of the reentry movement. Or go into legal system jobs. Or choose a life of "ministry."

And, you don't have to just support our little nonprofit of "experts" to do the work.

Unlocking our culture and practicing resurrection involves the whole community, all the institutions.

That's our mission statement—opening these relationships:

Folks coming home from prison don't just need nonprofits like Underground—they need employers to be part of the movement. And hire them, give them a chance. That's why we started Underground Employment Network.

And we need community colleges like Skagit Valley College to innovate, partner with local organizations, and engineer registration onramps for those leaving hard pasts.

That's the entire premise behind our One Parish One Prisoner movement: there are local churches everywhere who can do this.

If you have a pulse and some friends, you can love a neighbor returning from the prison tombs. The solution isn't complicated. We can unlock our lives, our social circles, and empty the prison complex. And heal together.

We need those summer camps. Wherever you are, find an organization working with people healing from the margins, and plug them into your programming.

This is the new Underground Railroad in American history today.

Here's another one: mental health therapists. We got tired of hearing our participants' descriptions of what they experienced at local agencies, with high turnover and poorly trained therapists with huge caseloads.

So we gathered a bunch of private-practice, quality therapists we know in the area. They all agreed they can each take on one of our participants, pro bono or lower fee paid by Underground (thanks to you, donors). Now we have an Underground Healing Therapy Network.

Underground Healing Participant (Lilly, left), and Navigator (Corinna, right)

This is how we re-weave a whole community, torn apart by generations of mass incarceration.

When we talk about "Movement Building" as part of what we do at Underground, we mean it.

Use your job, connect your job (or your hobby, your passion) to a local nonprofit with people who might need exactly what you're good at.

And maybe those folks could transform your life, and how your institution works. It's mutual.

Please forward this to folks who might be interested collaborators with you.

Spread the word,

Chris Hoke

Founder & Executive Director, Underground Ministries