Tuesday – April 15, 2025 – 5 pm –  FIELD TRIP:   COMPASS INTERNATIONAL FAMILY CENTER 

Calvary Curch, 1325 Evans Ave., Valparasio 

The Compass International Family Center’s mission is to welcome and equip international neighbors of all ages and genders with the education services and support needed to thrive in Northwest Indiana.  Join us as we visit the Family Center at Calvary Church.  First, we will meet with a member of the Compass team to learn about the program and then we will tour the facility to see the Compass team and volunteers at work. 

Tuesday – April 22, 2025–4 pm – PCCF and via zoom – Book Group

Title- Caste: the Origins of our Disconnect  by Isabel Wilkerson

Leader: Cindy Hesemann.  The Pulitzer prize-winning best selling author of The Warmth of Other Suns, examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions as we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings of morality. It is about power – which groups have it and which do not.  In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply research narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history, has been shaped by a hidden caste system, rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences peoples lives and behavior and the nations fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including a divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more   Using riveting stories about people – including Martin Luther King Jr, baseball’s Satchel Page, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others – she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan out their out-cast of the Jews, she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against, she writes about the surprising health cost of caste in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points towards the way America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
NOTE: There is a new movie based on the book- Origin was written and directed by Ava DuVernay