You can’t give peace, even to people who want it.
You can’t design it in one place and import it to another.
You can, however, work with those who yearn to achieve it.
That is what Pastor Ron Vignec did when he started Salishan Lutheran Mission in 1985. And it’s why he will receive the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize tonight at Pacific Lutheran University.
He’ll be the third recipient of the honor instituted by Thomas Heavey and sponsored by Norden Lodge No. 2, Sons of Norway; Embla Lodge No. 2, Daughters of Norway; and Pacific Lutheran University.
In 1985, Salishan was worn out by time and worn down by crime. The houses had been built during World War II as temporary quarters for shipyard workers. As public housing, any sense of community there had disintegrated into drugs, gangs, violence and fear.
Waves of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union swept into the shabby houses. Many didn’t speak English and had fled government persecution.
All the elements were there to render Salishan a community of victims.
Instead, Pastor Ron, as he’s known, saw strengths.
To Salishan, he brought personal experience of difficult times, a promise to serve God, an activist heart forged in the social turmoil of the 1960s. He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a Russian Orthodox mother and a French Catholic father.
He found support, then purpose, at Our Saviour’s Evangelical Norwegian-American Lutheran Church. After ordination, he served congregations across the continent, then at Pacific Lutheran University.
To the Salishan mission he brought the understanding that social services work when they are based on people’s assets, not rooted in their weaknesses.
The assets he found in Salishan’s beleaguered homes were remarkable. There were freedom fighters, gardeners, death camp survivors, nurses, doctors, artists, cooks, teachers, dancers, businessmen, loving parents, eager students, lifelong residents, and people with mental, physical and developmental disabilities.
In Pastor Ron’s vision, each of these people had unique strengths. In this urban war zone, each was a potential peacemaker.
He listened to their stories until he understood them. He asked what they wanted to build and how they wanted to go about it.
“The hard part was to allow these voices to be heard without interfering,” he said. “I validated people’s suffering and didn’t try to fix it.”
While he was challenging residents to help themselves, he was agitating among the powerful. Bring resources, he cajoled, demanded. Trust the peoples’ wisdom. Be partners.
It worked.
The people developed phone trees in all of Salishan’s languages. They enrolled their children in after-school recreation and tutoring programs. They taught and supported dance, language and citizenship classes. They learned how to access heath care and participate in their kids’ education. To every community meeting, big or communitywide, they brought food.
Though Pastor Ron’s vision and support were critical, he rightly insists that this was no one-man show. Tacoma Housing Authority, Tacoma police, Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, Washington State University Extension Service, Metro Parks, and every church and temple in the neighborhood joined in.
As they grew stronger, the people of Salishan drew more allies, more resources. They built a community garden, then, next to it, a park. They held spring festivals and harvest festivals.
Crime statistics plummeted.
Kids could safely ride their bikes, and seniors could safely tend their front-door flower gardens and their back-door vegetable patches.
Salishan residents accomplished all of this while working with Tacoma Housing Authority to plan a new Salishan, from the water mains to the rooftops. New Salishan is under construction now.
Renters and home owners mingle in solid homes along the first of the well-planned streets.
Pastor Ron’s Salishan Lutheran Mission has been bulldozed. Where it stood, there is now a mammoth pile of dirt he’s dubbed the ski slope. The mission has moved across Portland Avenue to Holy Family of Jesus Cambodian Episcopal Church. Pastor Ron’s desk has moved to the Northwest Leadership Foundation on Tacoma’s Hilltop.
It’s a base, that desk, in an organization housing 14 initiatives aimed at converting good intentions into solid community programs.
In Pastor Ron Vignec’s vision, that’s peacemaking.
MORE ONLINE | To see a video of Pastor Ron Vignec discussing the strength and accomplishments of the people of Salishan, visit our Web site. If you’ve never heard Pastor Ron deliver an homily, you don’t want to miss it. If you have heard Pastor Ron deliver a homily, you won’t want to miss it either, because he gives this one in under three minutes.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
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