By the time President Donald J. Trump federalized the Metropolitan Police Department, the Rev. Dr. Brian Scott Relford, Sr. and other members of Union Wesley African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church had already spent weeks planning for an annual event that connects residents to various resources.
For Relford, the event known as Unity in the Community served a much greater purpose this year for congregants and community members, many of whom were blindsided by federal government furloughs, cuts to Medicaid, and more recently, the surge of federal law enforcement agents and National Guard members in District neighborhoods.
“We understand that in order for the community to be safe, in order for the community to be better for all of us, then we have to work together,” Relford told The Informer. “I don’t think we [the church] have to lead everything, but I think we have to kind of be the place where we can gather and we can assemble and we can talk about whether it’s mental health or education.”
During the latter part of August, hundreds of community members converged upon Union Wesley AME Zion Church for its third iteration of Unity in the Community.
During the pandemic, this annual event started as Park and Praise, an outdoor service at The Fields at RFK Campus that congregants attended from the comfort, and safety, of their vehicles. Once the District and other jurisdictions made the full return to normalcy, Union Wesley AME Zion Church moved the festivities to the church grounds.
The tradition continued on Aug. 24 when Relford gave the sermon and congregants later received backpacks and school supplies while connecting with various local organizations. Those organizations included: College Bound, Inc., Win with Black Women; and the Rho Mu Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the latter of which provided blood pressure screenings. Other entities present at Unity in the Community were D.C. Fire and EMS; the Red Cross; American Diabetes Association; the Salvation Army, and D.C. Department of Behavioral Health.
The Leadership Council for Healthy Communities also provided health screenings, while members of the National Pharmaceutical Association answered health-related questions. Patrons received dental screenings, courtesy of Howard University’s Delta Mu Chi fraternity, along with resources that Relford said aims to encourage civic engagement during these precarious times.
“There’s a lot of information [to be] shared,” Relford told The Informer, “a lot of communication when it comes to the midterms and voting. These are partnerships that help us to do so many things when it comes to ministry and not just focus on a Sunday worship service.”
For Relford, such an atmosphere lays the foundation for a relationship rooted in trust, which he said benefits young people, a demographic that’s been targeted by federal agents since Trump evoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act.
“I’m even more concerned about the National Guard,” Relford told The Informer. “We’re talking about Black and brown children. I’m concerned when I’m hearing on the news that there is this push to treat juveniles like adults. These are our kids.”
Trump’s evocation of the D.C. Home Rule Act’s Section 740 is scheduled to expire at midnight on Sept. 11. As of Tuesday, lawmakers on the Hill have given no indication that they will approve an extension of the federal surge.
However, there’s consideration of 14 bills in the House that, if approved, allows for the prosecution of 14 year olds as adults, gives Congress a line-item veto in the D.C. budget, allows Trump to choose the D.C. attorney general, and paves the way for the rehiring of Metropolitan Police Department officers who commit serious crimes.
As D.C. government officials— and residents for that matter— prepare for what comes on Sept. 11 and beyond, Charlotte Lewis of the Queens Chapel Civic Association said she and her colleagues continue to keep a pulse on how neighbors in their quaint community feel about recent events.
“There’s some hopefulness with the fact that the House of Representatives did not vote to extend the federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department,” Lewis told The Informer. “People aren’t speaking too publicly about their concerns, but there’s just an air of waiting that exists.”
For nearly 60 years, the Queens Chapel Civic Association and Union Wesley AME Zion Church have enjoyed a relationship that Lewis said has allowed the church community and Queens Chapel residents to unite around issues of concern.
As Lewis recounted, such a phenomenon occurred in April when, amid furloughs and Medicaid cuts, D.C. Council members Christina Henderson (I-At large) and Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) spoke before Queens Chapel community members during the civic association’s monthly meeting at Union Wesley AME Zion Church.
Lewis expressed plans to bring D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, a regular at Union Wesley AME Zion, to a future civic association meeting as a keynote speaker.
“Of course that meeting will be held in person at Union Wesley,” Lewis told The Informer about the Oct. 20 event. “I told his chief of staff that should that date not work out, that the civic association will be flexible… because we think it’s important for him to come back…to the community to talk about the issues at hand.”
In recent years, as the Queens Chapel community increased in diversity, the Queens Chapel Civic Association has expanded its religious outreach beyond Union Wesley AME Zion. In doing so, the entity has created opportunities for Union Wesley to collaborate with St. Anselm’s Abbey and the Carmelite Community of WhiteFriars Hall, both also located in Northeast.
The civic association also engages families of elementary and middle schoolers who live in the community. However, Lewis acknowledges the work left to be done to bring older youth into the fold, even if they only make weekly visits to the neighborhood.
She said such efforts will continue in the lead up to the Queens Chapel Civic Association’s annual Community Day, which is scheduled for Sept. 13.
“Union Wesley does a fantastic job reaching out to youth, but those youth and families do not live in the Queens Chapel community,” Lewis said. “We do have some residents that are members of Union Wesley, but they don’t necessarily have young children. They are welcome to come [to Community Day] and I want the young people to come.”
Last month, during Union Wesley AME Zion’s Unity in the Community, Kimberly King counted among those who brought their children to the event.
A Northwest parent of a District high school student, King told The Informer that, since Trump federalized the local police force, they have spoken at length about the perils of traveling around the District.
The experience, as she explained, has been eye-opening.
“It’s even scarier for the parents because you just don’t know when it’s going to be, where it’s going to be,” King told The Informer. “But I think it’s interesting that my teenager kind of tells me where the checkpoints are going to be. They are very good now about learning to avoid them and learning where they’re supposed to be.”
During the pandemic, King attended the annual events that eventually turned into Unity in the Community. She said Unity in the Community has grown exponentially in the post-pandemic era, and at a time when community members could use the information the most.
“When everything finally settled, we decided that we would just go back to having it at the church…where we could really be together,” King told The Informer. “Each year we’ve added new vendors, new opportunities, new things for families and children and seniors and everybody to try and to be able to be engaged.”
For King, the latest iteration of Unity in the Community serves as a testament to what she’s known about the church she’s attended with her parents, grandparents and cousins for decades.
“It just feels like a regular thing for us because that’s what we do,” King told The Informer. “While we have not always done it this way, there’s always been opportunities for [the] community to be a part of Union Wesley and the things that we do in the community and beyond. It’s how we authentically act and engage on a regular day-to-day basis.”
The Black Church Leans Into Its Historic Purpose
Union Wesley AME Zion Church, located near the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Eastern Avenue in Northeast, was founded in Georgetown in 1844 when a small group of Black men and women left Mt. Zion Methodist Church to form their own religious institution.
By the mid-1880s, that newly formed church, then known as Second Colored Wesleyan Church, joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to officially become Union Wesley AME Zion Church.
In the 1960s, amid urban renewal that spurred displacement in Southwest and Georgetown, Union Wesley Zion Church moved to its current location in the Avondale community in Northeast. The church has since carried on a legacy going back as far as the church’s designation as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
These days, instead of freeing Black people from bondage of chattel slavery, church leaders aim to free the Black community from the shackles of ignorance.
“There are a lot of times when people feel certain ailments and feel intimidated about making an appointment with the doctor, but we provide access for you to certain things to be able to ask about anything from mental health,” said Dr. Treneisha Jones Gaston, a Union Wesley AME Zion board member who facilitates community partnerships.
Jones Gaston, a brain child of Unity in the Community, said that the curation of D.C. government and private vendors at the Aug. 24 event, and previous iterations, represented an effort to address various health-related issues affecting the community.
“For us, heart disease [is] one of the number one things that takes down our community, and so it’s very important that we get the message out as much as possible,” Gaston told The Informer.
Gaston said she also wanted to create an environment that compelled intergenerational engagement.
“We try to provide as much information as possible, physical, mental, spiritual health, and anything that has to do also with education programs for youth.”
Under Relford’s leadership, Union Wesley AME Zion Church has embraced its lineage of activism and service, most recently by conducting forums on a D.C. budget affected by a continuing resolution advanced by congressional Republicans.
During the last general election cycle, parishioners also mailed thousands of postcards to voters in the battleground states of Florida, Texas, Alabama and Louisiana.
This school year, Union Wesley AME Zion will continue its relationship with Langdon Elementary School, located less than two miles away. Through this collaboration, students receive lunch every Friday that’s prepared by members of Union Wesley AME Zion’s senior ministry.
As Black youth across the U.S. increasingly break away from the church, Relford emphasizes the need to meet them, and other disaffected populations, directly in the community.
“When you look at the ministry of Jesus Christ, most of his ministry was outside the church,” Relford said. “It wasn’t in the temple. It wasn’t in the synagogue. It was outside.”
That’s why, for Relford, affirming Union Wesley AME Zion’s position as an incubator of information and resources requires reminding community members— especially the youth— about the Black church’s historic significance.
“When you talk about schools, and banks or credit unions, they started in the Black church,” Relford told The Informer. “One of the things that the Black community still owns is the Black church. Now is the time for the Black church to really kind of go back to her roots. If we lose the Black church, I don’t believe we can point to any institution that is still unapologetically Black.”
