FACE Hunger and Homelessness-October-2025
About fifteen years ago I spoke to a volunteer with the Coalition of Religious Communities who had gone to the Utah Capitol Building multiple times a week during the 45 day legislative session. He told me that during the session he had conversations with all but one of the 104 people in the Utah legislature that year. At that time most legislators saw themselves as representatives for a specific community and they were comfortable speaking with people who disagreed with them in a civll, but pointed, manner.
Over the years since then, elected officials in Utah have become increasingly leery of engaging with the public. One factor that contributed to this decline in public engagement was the corresponding surge in toxic interaction on social media and the subsequent migration of trollish social media conversational styles into real life. A growing segment of the population is more interested in how their followers on social media will respond to a video of a conversation than the content of the conversation itself.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a further reduction of Utah's elected officials interaction with the public. Two years of reduced interaction was enough to permanently erase the openness that had existed a decade earlier. It is very unlikely that citizen lobbyist supporting legislation to curb payday lending will be able to get 104 Utah legislators to engage in a conversation with them during the 2026 legislative session.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk last week is not going to make predominantly conservative members of the Utah Legislature more inclined to take a chance on having a conversation with a stranger. From their perspective, Kirk was shot for advocating in favor of policy positions that they also support. They do not want someone making a video of them saying something that could get them shot. Given the fact that two Democratic state legislators were shot in Minnesota just three months ago it is easy to understand why elected officials in both parties are scared right now. The attempt to bomb a Fox 13 van over the weekend suggests that even people who report on Utah politics need to be more careful now than they did in the past.
However, this not a good time for us to all stick our heads in the sand and hope things eventually get better. Rich and powerful people will continue to lobby elected officials for policies that benefit themselves. They can afford to make large campaign donations and so they will have access. This is the reason Catholic social teaching talks about people of faith having a responsibility to take the side of people who are in poverty or excluded. Pope Francis expressed that obligation this way:
“Dialogue must not only favor the preferential option on behalf of the poor, the marginalized and the excluded, but also respect them as having a leading role to play. Others must be acknowledged and esteemed precisely as others, each with his or her own feelings, choices and ways of living and working. Otherwise, the result would be, once again, ‘a plan drawn up by the few for the few,’ if not ‘a consensus on paper or a transient peace for a contented minority.’ Should this be the case, ‘a prophetic voice must be raised,’ and we as Christians are called to make it heard.”
Our different faith and ethical systems hopefully share a belief that there is a better way to approach politics than silence or violence. Mahatma Gandhi taught that real change is brought through the sustained exercise of satyagraha-- or "truth force". Martin Luther King Jr. built on this principle saying, "We will meet your physical force with soul force." I believe that faith that a better community is possible is the only cure to the pervasive problems of cynicism and nihilism that are so visible right now.
I am sorry this email is so long. I wanted to write something simple explaining that we were going to attempt to move FACE Hunger and Homelessness's Gathering at the Capitol on January 15 from the Capitol Steps to somewhere inside the building where any legislators who visit us will feel less vulnerable. I also wanted to ask if anyone feels like we ought to organize an event or produce materials to explain the spiritual roots of nonviolent movements for justice and why those movements are generally more effective than the alternatives.
Is now a good time to to share resources our different communities have developed to affirm the inherent value of every human being and the importance of prophetic witness on behalf of those who are facing homelessness, hunger or other preventable harm in our state?
Bill Tibbitts, Director
FACE Hunger and Homelessness
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