Jeffrey L Steward,
One of the things I love most about this movement is that we don’t have to do everything alone.
At Vote Common Good, we’ve always believed the work of building a moral majority in America is bigger than any one organization, any one bus tour, any one election. So when one of our own co-chairs brings a project that speaks directly to the heart of what we’re all doing here, we make room for it. Gladly.
That’s Samir Selmanović, and what he’s put together this summer is something I genuinely think we all need.
I’ll let Samir take it from here.
— Doug
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You know the feeling.
You’re walking through your city, and you pass a person sleeping in a doorway or sitting on a corner. Inside you, a flicker of discomfort and helplessness. You don’t know what to do with it. So you keep walking.
That averted gaze is where one of the most remarkable books of our time begins.
When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America, by Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes, is a book about the invisible threads that connect us to every human being we pass, acknowledge, or ignore. About what kind of people we are becoming or could become.
Homelessness in America has reached record highs. The presence on our streets is impossible to ignore. And for people who believe, as our traditions teach across every scripture and every century, that we are called to see the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor — that visibility carries not only a moral weight, but a source of new energy for our resistance.
This is a book for that weight and energy.
This summer, we’re gathering to read it together.
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We’re hosting a three-part Book Salon this June and July — and we want you there.
A book salon is more than a book club. Each session is designed to move you from feeling to understanding to action.
Our host, Nate French, the most experienced community organizer in the country, will guide each conversation through human stories, systemic forces, and concrete steps we can take.
Joining us for all three sessions as our featured guest is co-author Donald W. Burnes himself — a rare opportunity to sit with the person who wrote the book.
Session I — Friday, June 12 · 7 pm ET The Human Cost: What We Lose When We Look Away We open with the heart of the matter: the real, named people whose lives form its core — and what it costs all of us, not just “them,” when we refuse to see.
Session II — Friday, June 26 · 7 pm ET Broken Systems: The Forces That Keep People on the Street Homelessness is not a personal failure. This session takes on the structural forces behind it — wages, housing, healthcare, and the laws that punish poverty rather than address it.
Session III — Friday, July 10 · 7 pm ET The Path Forward: Evidence, Hope, and the Role You Can Play The book ends with hope and action, and so will we. Evidence-based, people-first solutions — and what you can do, starting now.
All sessions are on Zoom. All are free. All are one hour.
→ Reserve your place — it takes less than a minute:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Jl8oC0DzR7ySPPPmFgLuuw#/registration
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Why this, why now — and why Vote Common Good
We know what this moment feels like. The exhaustion. The grief. The sense that the forces shaping our common life are too large, too entrenched, and too cruel to deal with.
The temptation is to retreat into news, analyzing, and protesting. All needed, but without actually caring for real people, deadly.Vote Common Good exists because we refuse that temptation. We believe that a new religious and civic imagination will change America. We believe that people from every faith tradition who take seriously the call to love their neighbor, to seek the common good, to treat every human being as someone in whom the sacred dwells — are a powerful constituency. We are a majority about to find each other.
When We Walk By is not a political book. But it is a profoundly moral and inspiring one. It asks us to look at a human being on the street and ask: What is this moment asking of me, personally, right now? Not just at the ballot box. Right now, on this corner, with this person.
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That is the question at the heart of the Vote Common Good movement and of this salon.
Reading this book together — with one of its authors in the room — is one of the most practical, grounding, heart-restoring things we can offer you this summer. Instead of getting more outraged, let’s get enlarged.
Come for one session or all three. Bring a friend, a faith community, a neighbor who’s been asking the same questions you have. Yes, even the person from, oh gosh, the other side!
→ Register now — free, on Zoom, no prior reading required:
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Soon, the dumb evil we are dealing with will be brought down, and we will dance on the streets. Let’s give depth and substance to our hope and joy by learning how to better care for each other.
Let’s order a printed, audio, or e-book copy and dive in right away!
Samir Selmanović
Vote Common Good co-chair
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Vote Common Good inspires people of good conscience to wake up, stand up, and speak up against MAGA politics and Christian Nationalism. We have a proven record of success moving faith voters away from radical candidates and inspiring them to vote their values for the common good. Please consider a contribution today.
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