Down Payment: Eliza B. Conley House of Resilience
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The Eliza B Conley House of Resilience: a Mennonite Catholic Worker rooted in Wyandotte County
Note: Any profit from this property will be donated to a community land trust and/or an anti-racist organization led by our BIPOC neighbors. Please scroll down for details.
UPDATE: With shock and deep gratitude, we are overjoyed to announce that, thanks to this fundraiser page and several mail-in donations, we met our initial goal after only two weeks! Thank you to everyone who made this possible. We took this leap of faith unsure of where it might lead, so your reciprocal faith is expanding our sense of beloved community.
Any additional donations received between now and our December 20 closing date will be directly applied to the down payment. Since over $11,000 has already been given, we have more than enough to reduce our interest rate by 1% with Liberty Bank and Trust, from 4.83 to 3.83%! Thanks to the gifts still being given, we are now aiming for $12,000, which would enable us to put 20% down and exempt us from paying expensive monthly mortgage insurance fees.
Thank you to all the mail-in (listed below) and GoFundMe donors who have already given so generously. If you’d like to help us reach our $12,000 (20% down) goal, please consider sharing this project with 3-5 friends. In the meantime, we’ll continue to post updates here. May peace be with you as we enter this second week of Advent.
_________________________________
MAIL-IN DONORS:
Aaron Barnhart & Diane Eickhoff ($200)
Anonymous ($2,000)
Anonymous ($1,500)
Grandview Park Presbyterian Church ($2,000)
Holy Family Catholic Worker Worship Community ($475)
Kathy & Willie Hunter ($1,000)
Seed Verse: Jesus took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”). — Mark 5:41
Seed Song: “Up” by Ellie Grace
Vision: We care for Earth, ourselves, and our neighbors in a small, sustainable community that transforms oppressive domination into mutual liberation.
Mission: We grow a healthy home by sharing labor and power, knowing our histories, partnering with Creation, and practicing hospitality, response-ability, and place-based peacemaking.
Finances: We are fundraising donations to make the largest down payment possible prior to closing in order to reduce our interest rate. Afterwards, we will rent 1-5 spare rooms in the house to cover mortgage payments, utilities, taxes, and upkeep. No tenant may be charged more than the affordable housing rate (~30% of income), and priority will go to local women activists working for systemic social justice in Wyandotte County + providing reparations to women of color in the form of rest and rent relief.
Once the mortgage is paid off, any profit from additional rent will be donated to the Wyandotte Nation, the Heart of America Kansas City Indian Center, a Quindaro-rooted organization, or a KCK-based community land trust (that is forming now). If the community dissolves, the property or its sale proceeds will be donated to one of the above organizations as an additional form of anti-racist reparations.
We already have sufficient funds for a 10% down payment, have signed a contract, have pre-qualified for the necessary loan via a community-minded bank (Liberty Bank and Trust, an African-American owned and operated bank based in New Orleans with two Kansas City branches), and (because of the house’s zip code and our first-time buyer status) are also pursuing closing cost assistance via the Community Housing of Wyandotte County.
Roots: We are co-founding the “Eliza B. Conley House of Resilience” in our Mennonite and Catholic Worker traditions with commitments to affordable housing, activist support, transformative justice, and anti-racist reparations. Experience teaches us that resilience requires a healthy balance between rest and resistance and that restoration is integral to each. Thus conflicts and decisions will be approached in a restorative manner rooted in the circle processes preserved by indigenous communities and taught by organizations like the Kansas Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Bethel College, where Kimberly earned a certificate in conflict resolution earlier this year. In years past, it has also been practiced at the neighborhood level via resources like the Rosedale Conflict Resolution Center.
Similarly, both indigenous and Biblical wisdom teach us to care for Creation — rather than view land as property from which people profit. As Mennonites, we believe Jesus is the center of our faith, reconciliation the center of our work, and community the center of our lives. Thus in the tradition of Mennonite scholar Elaine Enns, we pledge to practice watershed discipleship in partnership with our indigenous neighbors. For we who are White Settler Mennonites , this means not only tending Earth but also practicing anti-racist reparations in Jesus’ Jewish tradition of Jubilee by restoring the land where we reside as guests back to her original caretakers — our indigenous neighbors.
Wyandotte County is named for the Wyandotte Nation, of which Eliza “Lyda” Burton Conley was a member. Lyda was the first woman admitted to the Kansas Bar Association and the second woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, where she demanded the U.S. honor its treaty with the Wyandotte Nation to preserve the Huron Cemetery. Although she lost in court (as happens to so many just causes opposed by land-owning White men), she won at home. Together with her sisters Ida and Helena, Lyda used the Homestead Act to claim her ancestors’ burial grounds in downtown KCK and organized women from around Wyandotte County to advocate for her cause. Even after winning, Lyda continued to advocate for other vulnerable people, and KCK Public Library Kansas Room documents show her efforts included accompanying inmates at Leavenworth Prison across a span of several years.
Like Lyda, Jesus experienced firsthand betrayal and injustice from the law and order authorities of his day. Were it not for the resilient in his community, his story may have been lost. Indeed, his Mark 5:41 words “talitha koum” are one of the only Biblical phrases in Jesus’ indigenous language (Aramaic) that survived thousands of years of translations. So we take seriously both Jesus’ call for young women to rise up as well as all women’s right to take what we need in order to heal and be whole (just as a woman took her healing from Jesus earlier in the same story). At the same time, we recognize the vital role male allies like Jairus and Jesus himself play in these stories, and so we, too, welcome people of all genders who wish to stand in solidarity and plant these seeds alongside us.
Will you please join us in planting these seeds of just peace?
Note: Any profit from this property will be donated to a community land trust and/or an anti-racist organization led by our BIPOC neighbors. Please scroll down for details.
UPDATE: With shock and deep gratitude, we are overjoyed to announce that, thanks to this fundraiser page and several mail-in donations, we met our initial goal after only two weeks! Thank you to everyone who made this possible. We took this leap of faith unsure of where it might lead, so your reciprocal faith is expanding our sense of beloved community.
Any additional donations received between now and our December 20 closing date will be directly applied to the down payment. Since over $11,000 has already been given, we have more than enough to reduce our interest rate by 1% with Liberty Bank and Trust, from 4.83 to 3.83%! Thanks to the gifts still being given, we are now aiming for $12,000, which would enable us to put 20% down and exempt us from paying expensive monthly mortgage insurance fees.
Thank you to all the mail-in (listed below) and GoFundMe donors who have already given so generously. If you’d like to help us reach our $12,000 (20% down) goal, please consider sharing this project with 3-5 friends. In the meantime, we’ll continue to post updates here. May peace be with you as we enter this second week of Advent.
_________________________________
MAIL-IN DONORS:
Aaron Barnhart & Diane Eickhoff ($200)
Anonymous ($2,000)
Anonymous ($1,500)
Grandview Park Presbyterian Church ($2,000)
Holy Family Catholic Worker Worship Community ($475)
Kathy & Willie Hunter ($1,000)
Seed Verse: Jesus took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”). — Mark 5:41
Seed Song: “Up” by Ellie Grace
Vision: We care for Earth, ourselves, and our neighbors in a small, sustainable community that transforms oppressive domination into mutual liberation.
Mission: We grow a healthy home by sharing labor and power, knowing our histories, partnering with Creation, and practicing hospitality, response-ability, and place-based peacemaking.
Finances: We are fundraising donations to make the largest down payment possible prior to closing in order to reduce our interest rate. Afterwards, we will rent 1-5 spare rooms in the house to cover mortgage payments, utilities, taxes, and upkeep. No tenant may be charged more than the affordable housing rate (~30% of income), and priority will go to local women activists working for systemic social justice in Wyandotte County + providing reparations to women of color in the form of rest and rent relief.
Once the mortgage is paid off, any profit from additional rent will be donated to the Wyandotte Nation, the Heart of America Kansas City Indian Center, a Quindaro-rooted organization, or a KCK-based community land trust (that is forming now). If the community dissolves, the property or its sale proceeds will be donated to one of the above organizations as an additional form of anti-racist reparations.
We already have sufficient funds for a 10% down payment, have signed a contract, have pre-qualified for the necessary loan via a community-minded bank (Liberty Bank and Trust, an African-American owned and operated bank based in New Orleans with two Kansas City branches), and (because of the house’s zip code and our first-time buyer status) are also pursuing closing cost assistance via the Community Housing of Wyandotte County.
Roots: We are co-founding the “Eliza B. Conley House of Resilience” in our Mennonite and Catholic Worker traditions with commitments to affordable housing, activist support, transformative justice, and anti-racist reparations. Experience teaches us that resilience requires a healthy balance between rest and resistance and that restoration is integral to each. Thus conflicts and decisions will be approached in a restorative manner rooted in the circle processes preserved by indigenous communities and taught by organizations like the Kansas Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Bethel College, where Kimberly earned a certificate in conflict resolution earlier this year. In years past, it has also been practiced at the neighborhood level via resources like the Rosedale Conflict Resolution Center.
Similarly, both indigenous and Biblical wisdom teach us to care for Creation — rather than view land as property from which people profit. As Mennonites, we believe Jesus is the center of our faith, reconciliation the center of our work, and community the center of our lives. Thus in the tradition of Mennonite scholar Elaine Enns, we pledge to practice watershed discipleship in partnership with our indigenous neighbors. For we who are White Settler Mennonites , this means not only tending Earth but also practicing anti-racist reparations in Jesus’ Jewish tradition of Jubilee by restoring the land where we reside as guests back to her original caretakers — our indigenous neighbors.
Wyandotte County is named for the Wyandotte Nation, of which Eliza “Lyda” Burton Conley was a member. Lyda was the first woman admitted to the Kansas Bar Association and the second woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, where she demanded the U.S. honor its treaty with the Wyandotte Nation to preserve the Huron Cemetery. Although she lost in court (as happens to so many just causes opposed by land-owning White men), she won at home. Together with her sisters Ida and Helena, Lyda used the Homestead Act to claim her ancestors’ burial grounds in downtown KCK and organized women from around Wyandotte County to advocate for her cause. Even after winning, Lyda continued to advocate for other vulnerable people, and KCK Public Library Kansas Room documents show her efforts included accompanying inmates at Leavenworth Prison across a span of several years.
Like Lyda, Jesus experienced firsthand betrayal and injustice from the law and order authorities of his day. Were it not for the resilient in his community, his story may have been lost. Indeed, his Mark 5:41 words “talitha koum” are one of the only Biblical phrases in Jesus’ indigenous language (Aramaic) that survived thousands of years of translations. So we take seriously both Jesus’ call for young women to rise up as well as all women’s right to take what we need in order to heal and be whole (just as a woman took her healing from Jesus earlier in the same story). At the same time, we recognize the vital role male allies like Jairus and Jesus himself play in these stories, and so we, too, welcome people of all genders who wish to stand in solidarity and plant these seeds alongside us.
Will you please join us in planting these seeds of just peace?
Organizer
Kimberly Lynette
Organizer
Kansas City, MO