We have an infinite amount of strength to walk: interreligious practice during the 504 Occupation

This paper will explore how interreligious rituals and practices sustained the 1977 504 Occupation of the H.E.W. Building in San Francisco and will complicate the framework of host, guest, and hospitality that is often used when discussing interreligious ritual participation. I will work with the question of what conditions allow spontaneous interreligious ritual participation to occur.

Interreligious ritual participation is often thought of in terms of host, guest, and hospitality (Moyaert and Geldhoft 2015), with roles clearly defined. The space where ritual is taking place is often either the home of one of the traditions, or a space that is considered neutral. However, during the occupation, those occupying the building were not welcome; the U.S. government wanted them out of the building. Furthermore, there was no clear “host” religious group and no clear “guest” being hosted. Despite this, the occupants of the building lead shabbat and Passover services, celebrated Easter, and were sustained by interreligious prayer and ritual. If careful planning did not allow for this to occur, what did allow this interreligious practice to take place?

I will argue that the necessity to keep the building occupied, the activists needed to draw on whatever resources they had, including their religious practice. Interreligious practices were engaged with not by choice, but employed out of necessity.

However, the occupation was not the first time that activists had engaged in interreligious practices.

Before the occupation, many of the disabled activists were unable to participate before in “normative” religious practice due to the inaccessibility of religious spaces and religious texts. One of the organizers, Daniel Billups, despite his Catholic upbringing, read Hindu texts because those were the spiritual texts that were in braille. The constraint on religious practice and education caused by inaccessibility facilitated Billups’s knowledge in multiple religious traditions. Billups then brought this “multiple-belonging” background to the occupation where he lead the group in interreligious meditation, singing, and prayer.

I will first outline the religious practices that took place in the building during the occupation, drawing from a variety of primary sources. I will draw from memoirs of the activists, such as Judy Heumann. I will draw from newspaper articles covering the occupation and Daniel Billups’ interview in the Black Panther. Central to this project is archival material from The Healing Community, an interfaith disability rights organization from the 1970s. The Healing Community had a chapter in San Francisco during the time of the occupation and supported the occupation by providing religious support by their leader Rev. Norman Leach. Leach provided communion to the group and lead Easter services in the occupied building.

From these accounts, I will show that interreligious practices were central in sustaining the 504 Occupation. I also propose that the constraints of the occupation and the disabled activist’s religious lives allowed interreligious ritual to occur spontaneously, unlike many examples of interreligious ritual participation. Furthermore, this ritual occurred not only out of a desire for understanding or education, but out of necessity to keep the building occupied.

This occupation is useful for thinking about non-violent methods of organizing and how interreligious practices can be one tool. I also hope to uplift the religious practices of disabled people, especially how disability shaped what access to religion they had and how this may have contributed to an attitude and ethos that was open to interreligious engagement.