This year more than ever, your donations and memberships will mean the world to somebody
We can’t weave a world of peace in streets full of homeless people
Homelessness has tentacles. People in Fayetteville who make less than $18 an hour (lots of us) are on a cliff edge that makes housing feel fragile. REALLY fragile.
An illness. A car breakdown. A sick child. Small things can push us, or people we care about, over that edge.
Those tentacles of uncertainty reach out to make everyone in the community less secure. Some feel sympathy for people in need—others may feel it threatens their way of life—but everyone’s disturbed by the presence of desperate people on our streets.
The last election didn’t make anything less uncertain. The new administration won’t waste any sympathy on vulnerable folks.
When it comes to taking care of each other, communities that care may find ourselves on our own more than ever. But housing is a primary justice issue of our times, and none of us are immune. Those folks who have fallen over the edge live in hidden systems of injustice that are tough to escape without help. It weakens our community’s precious sense of connection and erodes Fayetteville’s thriving economy.
If the fabric of our community unravels from the bottom it threatens the peace and stability of our entire area. But this is where we are. And we need your help. We need to tackle this together.
For the past year, some of us in the OMNI community have explored the housing and homelessness crisis in Fayetteville deeply together. We want to understand it and do something.
There are two action projects at OMNI we’d like you to know more about:
- The Homeless Solutions Project — a group that’s been learning for action since August 2023. Many wonderful speakers have shared the work they do to help unhoused people. Every month’s program was an education and an inspiration. When the Fayetteville Housing Crisis Task Force was appointed this summer, we shifted into advocacy to alert the Task Force to the hardships of many city residents. Homeless Solutions meets the first Thursday of every month.
- OMNI’s also deep into planning for Gateway Village, an attractive village of pod housing where 20 or so unhoused people can stay with dignity while they wait for the real homes the city’s Task Force promises. This village will be a safe, clean, and environmentally sustainable site where some good people can access the services they need to live safely and legally while they await their own housing. Everyone working on this project is committed to seeing it become a real gift to the city we love and to our neighbors in need.
As we learn to care for the most vulnerable, all of us become more secure. This year your support will not only sustain OMNI as a powerful space to address the critical issues of peace, justice, and a thriving Earth, but will also help us build Gateway Village.
Help us focus Fayetteville’s compassion to show that lives matter to us even when they’re falling apart. We’re as serious about this as you are. Together, we can move our city forward. Please make your gift to OMNI now and be part of a new, more sane and humane world no matter what tentacles are twisting in the political winds.
Thank you, OMNI folks!
OMNI HAPPENINGS
HERE TO STAY
March for the Dignity of Immigrant Workers MARCH 31st Gather at 1:30 PM in Murphy Park Springdale Live Music, Art, Theater Play by Workers 3:00 PM Peaceful March 1.7 miles to Luther George Park. Venceremos,…
Death may be more interesting than you realize
Fenix Gallery Hosts a Death Cafe with Greta Allendorf Death may be more interesting than you realize March 28 – 6:00-7:00 pm Fenix Gallery, Mount Sequoyah Meet Greta Allendorf, Death Doula and very interesting speaker….
Indivisible Empty Chair Town Hall
Saturday March 22- 1:30 – Good Shepherd Lutheran, 2925 Old Missouri Road. Where are they? Cotton – Boozman – Womack? Senators Tom Cotton, John Boozman, and Representative Steve Womack are supposed to hold town hall…
Omni holds First Annual Gathering since covid!
Saturday April 19 – 7:00 pm – Miller Hall, Mt. Sequoyah We’re so excited! Long time member Susan Idlet found us a site to hold an annual meeting at last! In partnership with Fenix Arts…
Indivisible Monthly Meeting
Saturday March 15 – 1:30 – Good Shepherd Lutheran, 2925 Old Missouri Road. Here’s Donna Mulhollan lost in a crowd of people attending her postcard writing party at Omni Thursday night. They did 200 cards…
nwaTogether and Omni sponsor potluck
New Chapter Begins Tomorrow nwaTogether and Omni sponsor potluck dialogues for hard times Saturday March 15, 5:30 pm Omni Center Saturday the first of a series of dialogue potluck dinners will begin that let people…
Meals Project for homeless people through the Gateway Project
You Can Help Big Time! Meals Project for homeless people through the Gateway Project The crazy situation from Washington DC has us all unsettled. It’s not going to get better for awhile. Omni Center’s Gateway…
Hog Farms Still Try to Take Over the Buffalo
The sponsor of hog farm bill SB 290 did it again. For the third time, the bill to allow CAFOs in the Buffalo River watershed was on the Senate Agriculture Committee agenda and not called…
Helping build a future for the next generation of peace people … It’s for all of us
Greetings Peace People out there
To build a future, Omni suggests that Fayetteville build a timebank. In fact it’s already under construction. It’s a good vehicle for creating connection and cohesion, and helping communities get themselves through hard times.
This is Fayetteville. Connected and cohesive is what we want to be, because
we’re all in this together. We have history to build on that will let us do that
when other communities find it a far stretch. One lesson of covid might be that we’ve been shown where healing needs to happen, so we can go there to heal.
Here lies the work of peace.
hOurWorld.org—An internati onal network of neighbors helping neighbors. https://hourworld.org/
Timebank.org—Building the timebanking movement https://timebanks.org/
What is a timebank?
Support Omni
Time-Based Currency
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time –
based_currency
Timebanking: An Idea Whose Time Has Come – Yes Magazine 2011
About the time of the Occupy Movement, and during the post-2008 economic crash time-banks got some good press. Cooperative currencies like time dollars are especially helpful during hard economic times. Thankfully, the economy is strong now, but no one expects that to last forever.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/
economy/2011/11/18/time -banking-an-idea-whose-ti me -has-come
NPR 2011 Beyond Barter: Banking on Connections
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/19/138510242/beyond-bartering-banking-oncommunity-connections
The Timebank Solution – Stanford Social Innovation Review 2015. Interview with Time-banks founder Edgar Cahn and Christine Gray
https://ssir.org/arti cles/entry/
the_ti me_bank_solution
OMNI CARES
Here is a list of local help and resources for us all.
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