This pastor turned policy advocate is joining our team to build pathways from civic learning to action
By India Daniels and Grace Del Vecchio
Portrait by Grace Del Vecchio
We are excited to welcome Rachel Birkahn Rommelfanger to the team as City Bureau’s new Director of Chicago Documenters!
Rachel is a Chicagoland native, second-generation pastor and policy wonk. They come to City Bureau with a wide range of experience in pastoral care, policy and community organizing in churches and local government.
Rachel is driven by their love for people and the belief that directly impacted folks are the ones best positioned to inform public policy and systemic change.
We asked Rachel to share a little bit about their experiences, background and what they’re bringing to the role. Here are some of the highlights, edited for length and clarity.
WHAT IS YOUR CONNECTION TO PLACE AND WHERE YOU CALL HOME?
I was born and raised in Chicago, but I don’t think of home as a particular address. My mother was a United Methodist minister, so we moved a lot when I was a kid. I’ve lived in Evanston, Ravenswood, briefly on the West Side, Woodlawn, Lincoln Square. Now I live in Washington Park.
There are big landmarks or things that orient me, like the lake, churches I attended, the ‘L,’ but then it's also very much the folks I've known throughout my life here in the city and the communities I’ve been a part of that make me think of home.
YOU ARE A PASTOR TURNED PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCATE. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PATH THROUGH THESE ROLES.
My work in churches has always been about people and inspiring them to action and to make our world a better place. And that's so much of what organizing is about: casting the vision for a better world, a society that cares for people. Public policy is about finding good solutions to make that vision a reality.
I mentioned that my mother was a pastor. My father was a community organizer, so when I was growing up, there was an emphasis on improving the world and justice seeking.
When I went off to college in Washington, D.C., I saw myself going into public policy, but I also remained very involved with the church, and mentors encouraged me to go to seminary. They told me, you want to walk into meetings with elected officials and say you're a reverend. You want those communities to come with you, the moral authority to come with you, all of this experience, to come with you into those rooms. And I saw that with my mother, that elected officials always talked with her a little bit longer, because they realized she wasn't just speaking for herself.
HOW DID BEING INVOLVED WITH THE CHURCH SHAPE YOUR POLITICAL EDUCATION?
The United Methodist denomination is structured just like the United States government. I served as a delegate, drafted legislation and learned Robert’s Rules of Order, so that translates very naturally for me to encourage and fight for things in our more secular system.
For most of my life, I’ve been involved with efforts to push the United Methodist denomination toward LGBTQ+ inclusion, and that has been really formative for me. My mother served one of the first United Methodist churches in the country to welcome and affirm queer folks but the overall denominational stance was homophobic and limited LGBTQ+ participation. The church my mother served took every chance it got to propose legislation to move the needle.
In college, I became a leader with a national movement called Methodist Students for an All Inclusive Church (MOSAIC). We taught people how the political process worked, wrote legislation, held protests. I organized a 200-person protest where young people shared stories of why they thought the church should change, because our generation was changing and the world had changed around us.
Just in the past year, the denomination voted to strike language that said homosexuality was incompatible with Christian teaching and to lift a ban on LGBTQ+ clergy. It was a lot of legislation, but also protesting and pushing for change.
WHAT DREW YOU TO CITY BUREAU AND CHICAGO DOCUMENTERS?
City Bureau is at the intersection of journalism, transparency and accountability, and is forging pathways for more people to be active in the process. That aligns with my experience with building community and advocating for systems to be responsive to our needs.
I also like that the Chicago Documenters program encourages people to attend and get curious about public meetings, because I’ve seen so many limitations and possibilities in those spaces.
TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE OF LOCAL PUBLIC MEETINGS.
As policy director for Friends of the Parks, I went to a lot of Chicago Park District meetings. At that time, they moved around to different parks, so you didn’t always have much advance notice of where it would be held. Because it was my job to attend, I could rearrange my schedule to prioritize those meetings, but for other people that’s not very accessible. It also felt like a lot of the decisions had been made before the meeting happened, and the vote at the meeting was just a formality. Even with public comments or presentations on significant items, there was very little discussion.
I was frustrated that these meetings and systems are not always easy to understand or follow, but I also saw that people being there held the Park District accountable. For example, communities organized in response to NASCAR in Grant Park and Riot Fest in Douglass Park, and the Park District ended up changing its rules so that events for more than 10,000 people a day are subject to a board vote at a public meeting. It can’t be just the mayor and a couple of staff people signing off. That happened because people kept showing up, speaking out and questioning the process.
HOW DO YOU APPROACH YOUR PUBLIC POLICY WORK?
I'm really interested in people and their lives being better. When I was at the Chicago Jobs Council, I worked on a multi-year campaign to put an end to driver's license suspensions for unpaid fines and fees, like parking tickets or red light cameras. It might not seem related to workforce development at first glance, but that policy push came from people telling us, well, I couldn’t pay the fines when I didn’t have a job; now I have a job but in order to keep it I need to be able to drive there. They helped us iterate the solution to make their life better and we were able to leverage our power as an organization to change an oppressive system.
To connect with Rachel, feel free to reach out at rachel@citybureau.org.