As Rapid City, SD, entered the coldest temperatures of the year, pastors and community organizers from Rapid City are working against time and city officials to protect unsheltered relatives from deadly artic weather.
Entering the holiday weekend, as overnight lows reaching -42’, unsheltered relatives were turned away from one of the city’s two overnight shelters. The Care Campus, a facility operated by of the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, serves adults suffering from addiction or mental health conditions.1 Unsheltered relatives under the age of 18, or who are sober have regularly been turned away from overnight shelter at the Care Campus. Despite city officials’ assurances that there was “an abundance of space” and that no one would be turned away, sober relatives who did not meet the criteria for the Care Campus were put on the street.2
Confronted with this disconnect between the stated position of city officials and the reality for unsheltered relatives in Rapid City facing closed doors at city shelters, pastors and community organizers opened Woyatan Lutheran Church as a temporary warming shelter. Friday afternoon, during a wake at the church, pastors and community organizers began erecting an military-grade warming tent to handle overflow capacity. Within 30 minutes, city officials arrived with a police escort to halt progress on the tent, confronting the pastors and community organizers and interrupting the wake.
Lieutenant Tim Doyle and John Olson, the city’s chief code enforcement officer, presented church leaders with a “Stop Work” order and demanded that the tent not be completed. According to city officials, the proper “permits had not been secured” to erect a temporary shelter on the church’s private property. Vicki Fischer, the city’s Community Development Director told reporters later, “We have a cold spree that we have not experienced in a long time, and we have a lot of vulnerable people that need to be sheltered. So the message was ‘you don’t need to take down a tent, just please don’t use it.”
When confronted with a pattern and practice of city shelters turning away unsheltered relatives, Doyle and Olson told church leaders, “the Penning County Jail could be used as a temporary shelter” if the city shelters were at capacity. City officials later clarified that unsheltered relatives would not be “charg[ed] … criminally so they could go into the jail, it’d be in a total noncriminal context. It would simply be using the extent of our resources to make sure that no one was turned away into the cold.” Meanwhile, the city continues to block pastors and community leaders from offering safe, warm shelter in their churches.
In Mayor Salamun’s ongoing war of the homeless, city ordinances apparently trump a church’s ability to do the work of the Gospel. Jesus said, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me…” (Matt 25:35-36). Mayor Salamun and officials in Rapid City respond, “Not on my watch!” as they continue a pattern of harassment of the unsheltered relatives of Rapid City and the churches coming to their aid.
In the meantime, Woyatan Lutheran has again opened its doors again for prayer, worship, and services for the unsheltered community of Rapid City with a prayer vigil. Said Fr. Joe Hubbard of St. Matthew’s and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Churches, partners with Woyatan in this community response, “Today, we honor Martin Luther King, Jr., and his legacy of confronting racial injustice and dismantling white supremacy, and we recognize those same evils at work in our community. Tonight we begin a 72 hour prayer vigil to resist the powers and principalities that enslave our relatives in Mní Lúzahan. Join us wherever you are as we pray for justice to roll
down like the waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Mitákuye Oyásin!”
Joe Hubbard is the Rector of St. Matthew’s and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Churches in Rapid City, SD, a covenant partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities of faith. He was ordained to the priesthood on Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, and he spent the first two years of his ministry learning alongside the Diné of Navajoland. Joe served as the Vicar of St. Christopher’s Mission and the Ministry Developer and Priest-in-Charge of the Utah Region of the Episcopal Church on Navajoland. Joe is originally from Montgomery, AL, where he founded a regional Civil Rights and Litigation law firm and served in the Alabama House of Representatives.
Would you or your community of faith be willing to join with us in accepting Jesus’ invitation, “if you love me, feed my sheep” (Jn 21:17)?
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Apart, none of us have everything we need to survive and thrive, but together, we have all the things we need.
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