I Don't Feel Safe in My Ward

I went back to visit my old ward. We live within 10 minutes of it still, but are in a totally different stake. Every person who saw me was glad to see me. It has been so long, I forgot what church was supposed to feel like. I haven't been hugged like that in years, y'all.

We have a decade of history together. They've seen me at my worst. They know so many things about me without explanation. I'm deeply unlike so many of them, and they love me anyway. Not in spite of it. Because of it. It was a good meeting. I got to see pictures of the Sunday School crew I taught as teenagers. Many of them are married now and have children of their own.

Those of you who went through the nightmare mismanagement of COVID-19 in my current ward will recall I was trying to get a boundary exception to return to my previous one. My new bishop asked for the opportunity to make things right. It has been two years since then. I have never once, in that time, felt like I belonged there. I continue to be the new person. And there are several reasons for that.

My ward boundaries straddle part of the Bench and Garden City, two areas of Boise that couldn't be more different from each other. Or at least they used to be. The differences between them are slowly disappearing.

The Bench is an established neighborhood that was the prime target for out-of-state buyers during the housing boom. Their houses have accumulated millions of dollars in equity because of wealth transfer from West Coast buyers overpaying for houses up there. The Bench is very insular. I once heard an older woman say that she never leaves the Bench if she can help it because she doesn't need to. Everything she needs is there. There's subtext there you could miss if you didn't live here. There is classism and racism baked into that remark.

I live in an older section of Garden City, a historically poor and diverse area that is currently being gentrified. I'm surrounded by trailer parks that are slowly being eliminated to make room for multi-million dollar condos because we're close to the Boise River. I'm watching the diverse area around me being destroyed and replaced with rich white people. 

I live in the one neighborhood we were told to avoid when we moved to Boise because of "crime and drugs." That is Garden City's reputation. They talk about it like it's the inner city. It's the most absurd thing I've ever seen. I've lived in the worst neighborhoods of many towns throughout my life. Garden City is so far from the worst, it's comical to me. The need for the barbed wire permanently mounted on top of my fence is beyond exaggerated. If they think this is Hood, they couldn't handle where I actually come from. If you can put Peg Man on Google Maps where you live, you don't live in the Hood. If you can get pizza delivered to where you live, you don't live in the hood.

The people who live up on the Bench want absolutely nothing to do with any of us down here and haven't for decades. They don't understand anything about us and our lived experiences. To them, we're charity cases that "balance out" the ward demographics. The things I've heard some of these people say, out of a profound lack of class consciousness and straight up bigotry, would make your skin crawl. My experience with them over the years I've been here "giving them a chance" has not improved the situation. To say I don't like them is a gross oversimplification of my efforts to look past their faults, forgive their shortcomings, and make this situation work.

I don't feel safe with them.

My congregation is assigned to me because of where I live, so there is very little I can do about it. Getting a boundary exception is all but impossible without some extenuating circumstances that necessitates it—a family member who needs support, a divorce that requires separation, and other such human conflicts, usually within families.

"They treat me better" isn't a good enough reason. "If I have to listen to one more person use a slur in my presence, I'm going to cuss them out in testimony meeting" isn't a good enough reason. These people showed me who they are the moment we arrived in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

I can't do this again with people who aren't even half as humble as they were. I'm tired of telling people with more money than sense how to act. No amount of money they have to spend on activities I don't even go to is worth all this aggravation. They can keep their money. I would rather go to church with all of Garden City than spend another minute in their presence.

I went through the 2016 election and the fallout with my old ward. The reason they know how to act, in at least some small part, is because of me. If I have to do this again, it needs to be with people who already see me as a person worthy of respect. That's just not something I'm going to get where I am.