CCNV
   OUR HlSTORY

        The Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) is a Washington, D.C.-based community that began in late 1970 as an expression of both faith and moral outrage. A few concerned people faced a war and the question of what to do about it. While we    continued to talk of peace and oppose the war in Southeast Asia, we also prepared to make peace with our neighbors. We opened a soup kitchen in 1972, and soon we were feeding 200 to 300 people a day, seven days a week.

        In December 1976, we began in earnest the task of securing adequate, accessible space, offered in an atmosphere of reasonable dignity, for every man, woman, and child in need of shelter. In committing ourselves to that task, we also committed ourselves to listening for the cry of the poor around us, to bringing their pain and suffering into the open, to putting spiritual and physical resources into an unfolding struggle whose  dimensions have grown dramatically.

        Since 1976, we have provided emergency shelter in many settings. Th rough choice and through circumstance, many of us have lived on the streets for months at a time. In  pursuit of just action by those--locally and nationally--who possess the resources to    help those in need, we have aggressively involved ourselves in the development of    shelter space, food programs, long-range policy, legislation, and consciousness.

   OUR COMMUNlTY

      In all that we do, we serve as volunteers, sharing the bounty--or lack thereof--with  our guests. The people we serve are victims--bodies broken, spirits equally disfigured.  Yet, we know that all are victims; none are safe or secure. Thus, the Community for Creatjve Non-Violence, which sees the breaking of bread with the victims of injustice as  a responsibility born of faith, also sees an equivalent need to resist the forces of injustice which victlmize all, to demand responsibility and accountability from individuals, not  institutions. A community which serves soup, but not Caesar. 

      Our life together has a spiritual foundation, expressed in a variety of ways. While  predominantly Christian, the religious makeup of CCNV is richly varied. We have  emerged from an assortment of backgrounds, commonly denoted by the past tense: a  research chemist, a city planner, a suburban housewife, a management consultant, a  Congressional aide, as well as several ex-prisoners, veterans, and college students.  Many CCNV members first entered the community as guests at the soup kitchen or the  shelter. As a community, we are black and white; we have been well off materially, and  we have been poor. Here we live together and struggle together, though virtually  nothing in our history taught us to do so. Together we serve directly and through acts of  resistance, we stretch the meaning of our faith, and we try to turn beliefs into daily acts.

      Our work is sustained prlmarily by small donations. We feed hungry people--and  ourselves--with discarded and surplus food. We clothe homeless people--and  ourselves--with the excess of others; we serve with faith and hope that other eyes will  be opened. No one in CCNV receives a salary.