writermag.com • The Writer | 31people came in with their poems.
“These were people from the streets,
on the road to express the deepest
part of their struggle,” he explains. He
remembers one woman in particular
who read one night. “She began to
sing and chant. She was incredibly
gifted – homeless – on the waitlist for
sheltered housing.”
His teaching and his books have
sparked what he describes as a “grass-
roots faith” on the streets and in home-
less encampments. “My dream is to be
able to send my book of poems and
meditations into prison systems,” he
says. “I’ve never done prison time, but
one young man read my words about
what it’s like to be incarcerated, and he
almost started crying. He said, ‘This is
my life.’”
Williams’ poem “Protect Me from
My Enemies” from When the Struggle
is Real begins:
Lord, protect me from those who don’t mean no good;
They creeping through the back streets of my hood.
Sometimes it’s a fake homie whose smile is a mask,
Asking questions that he really has no business to ask.
Lord, protect me from those who don’t mean no good;
The ones who said, ‘I can’t’ when they really could.Twenty years ago, Williams has
founded a ministry to human traffick-
ing victims. He volunteers as a board
member for Homies Empowerment, a
community-based outreach for youth
involved in gangs. He’s currently
interim minister of Compassionate
Care at GLIDE Church in the San
Francisco Tenderloin district. In 2015,
the Oakland City Council awarded
him a proclamation for his work help-
ing victims of human trafficking and
street violence.
His newest book, Taking it to the
Streets: Lessons from a Life of Urban
Ministry (IVP, 2019), records the chal-
lenges and victories of his work. The
introduction reads:
Have you ever seen a bullet-rid-
dled body leaking blood on the
asphalt of the church parking
lot? Have you ever been gripped
by the chill of night as you
watched a child being forced to
sell her shivering, half-naked
body in front of an empty
church? Have you ever watched
hungry, homeless people, devoid
of hope, wander sad-eyed up the
streets and wondered why the
church had not marshalled all its
terrific resources to put bread in
their bellies? I have.“I’m living in a time of crisis in
Oakland, in the midst of a heroin epi-
demic where people sit on sidewalks
injecting needles into their arms,” Wil-
liams says. “Tech companies in the Bay
Area have created a social tsunami for
those who live here. People can’t afford
to live in the most low-income neigh-
borhoods of the Bay Area anymore,
and so they’re living in tent cities.”
His hip hop prayers come from the
spiritual interactions he experiences
daily on the streets. “I am an inner-city
minister who wraps his arms around
people in all kinds of riveting life epi-
sodes,” he explains. “I could be on the
bus riding down a street where teenage
girls are being trafficked and the words
of prayer begin to revolve in my mind.
I might be walking through a sprawl-
ing homeless encampment here in
Oakland, California that resembles
Calcutta in an effort to bring food to
someone who is hungry. The sights,
sounds, and smells are so vivid that
they inspire prayer and verse. That’s
where the words come from that even-
tually rhyme and find themselves
inside of one of my books.”Melissa Hart is the author of Better with
Books: 500 Diverse Books to Ignite Empathy and
Encourage Self-Acceptance in Tweens and
Teens (Sasquatch, 2019). Instagram/Twitter
@WildMelissaHart