Marin City church strives to unify county through discussion

A new initiative in Marin City aims to get people from across the county talking about key issues and seeing each other as neighbors.

The series of events, titled “Come to the Table,” brings 25 Marin City residents and 25 people from elsewhere in the county together for dinners. The program, organized by St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, is free to participants.

“The idea was, how do you bring in new people, how do you give people the chance to get to know each other in conversation and see each other as neighbors and not as ‘those folks’?” said the Rev. Floyd Thompkins, lead pastor at the church. “And finally, how do we get exposure for organizations that are working on the same issues across those spaces?”

The guests are seated randomly and provided with optional discussion topics. A related speakers’ forum, which is open to about 200 people, explores issues that many residents regularly encounter, such as affordable housing, environmental concerns and education.

“All of these big problems can be solved by the same human frailty and ingenuity that caused them,” Thompkins said. “And it’s really important that people not enter this conversation from only a point of identity.”

Maralisia Mack, founder of CARE Marin and volunteer for the event series, said the public response has been encouraging.

“People were just so happy to be able to have the conversations, people who don’t normally be in those conversations,” Mack said. “It’s not just education, it’s communicating and bridging that gap.”

According to Thompkins, the initiative was inspired by an organized conversation last year among spiritual leaders in the county. He said the one-day event led to three main conclusions: Many people in the county don’t know what the key issues in Marin City are; many felt afraid to visit the community; and many lacked an understanding of how places throughout the county face the same issues to some degree.

Despite Marin’s reputation as one of the healthier and wealthier counties in the state, it also ranks the third most racially disparate, according to a report last year by Race Counts, a research organization. Equity indicators show that communities of color in Marin County — like Marin City, which is historically African American — experience severe inequalities in areas such as life expectancy, health care, affordable housing and economic mobility.

For example, Mack said, many people did not know that the life expectancy in Marin City is less than the rest of the county or that there are concerns about Marin City’s drinking water.

“Marin City doesn’t have a dance studio for girls, or where they could take piano lessons, or I’m from New Orleans, suppose a child wants to play some instruments?” Mack said. “All those things are part of healing, all those things are development, to help grow and have a better and brighter future.”

The two talks so far focused on employment and the arts. After the arts conversation, a church in Tiburon expressed interest in setting up a fund for Marin City youths to go to the theater, according to Thompkins and Anne Devero-Rosenfeld, a volunteer for the initiative.

“It’s important to understand, really, the community down there in Marin City,” Devero-Rosenfeld said. “I mean they really are a community. They all know their neighbors. They all work together in one way shape or form.”

The series is funded by donations. At a fundraiser in February, about 200 people from Marin County donated, raising around $15,000.

Devero-Rosenfeld said the program has enough for the next two events, on history and health care, before it will need to raise more funds to keep it going.

Thompkins and Devero-Rosenfeld said they are pleased with the turnout so far. Prospective dinner guests sign up and are selected on a first-come, first-served basis. No repeat attendees are permitted.

The speakers’ forums, which are open to the public, are about half full on average, the organizers said.

The next dinner is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Saturday, followed by a speaker forum at 7 p.m. Both will be held at the church.

The forum will be about the county’s history and how it influences the present. More information can be found at ctttmarin.org.

“It’s not that our communities don’t want to be connected,” Thompkins said. “But somehow they haven’t figured out how. This is not a religious program but it is a faith program, and the faith is to believe in each other, believe in our common humanity.”