Sixty Words for Welcome
The following excerpt from Volume One is the intro to the interview with Kitti Murray from Refuge Coffee Co. To read the full interview, back Liberatus Volume One on Kickstarter. To help us reach the all or nothing goal by the February 18 deadline, share the Kickstarter page with your friends.
Cover photo by Taryn Schultz.
“Here comes one more interruption and then we’ll get started.”
And that’s how the recording of the interview with Kitti Murray, founder of Refuge Coffee Co. began. At the coffee shop housed in an old car repair garage in Clarkston, Georgia, interruption means welcome. Somehow, each welcome here reinforces the welcome of everyone else.
Centered in “the most diverse square mile in the country,” according to Time magazine, the shop with its two red coffee trucks stands as an embassy to humanity in an age when political leadership makes it ambiguous who’s welcome in our communities and who isn’t.
Political leadership though, is paradoxically a representation of the people and a way to reinforce certain character traits in them. While our country needs leaders who are willing to transcend partisan divides, the best way to create that future is through communities changing the narrative where they live. When those divides are overcome locally, our representatives in Congress will reinforce that community spirit when they convene in the Capitol.
Founded in 2015, Refuge Coffee Co. offers jobs and job training for people who moved to Clarkston as refugees. And a lot more: holiday markets, 5k runs, chai-making workshops, and of course coffee. The nonprofit now runs two locations, the other in Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn district. As their website notes, it’s “the heart of what Dr. King called the ‘Beloved Community.’”
Maybe, from Sweet Auburn to Clarkston, the people here that represent five continents, 45 countries, and 60 languages can show us what it means to be beloved, to be a community, and to be welcomed.
Photo by Joe Gonzalez
weekly action item:
For inspiration for the journey to overcome us vs them narratives and become Americans the next generation will love, back Liberatus Volume One now on Kickstarter. To help us reach the all or nothing goal by the February 18 deadline, share the Kickstarter page with your friends and invite them to the Presidents’ Day event below.
After the Kickstarter, 20% of donations made for each volume will fund partner organizations giving peace a voice across the United States, like Refuge Coffee Co.
To join us on Zoom, RSVP here.
Liberatus is a community journal on wholeness in politics, giving us inspiration to overcome us vs them narratives and become Americans the next generation will love.
Journal Entry #122
ISSUE 018: INAUGURATE PEACE, PART 3