CLUE Santa Barbara Clergy & Laity United for Economic & Social Justice
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CLUE Santa Barbara Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice
CLUE Santa Barbara Clergy & Laity United for Economic & Social Justice
CLUE Santa Barbara Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice
Larry Severance was born and raised in Southern California. He graduated from U.C. Riverside with double-majors in psychology and economics. He went on to earn a Ph.D.in social psychology at Duke University. He served in U.S. Army from 1969-1971 and was honorably discharged. He became interested in criminal justice while teaching at Skidmore College in upstate New York, and taught residents inside a maximum security prison (“University Without Walls”). He later moved to Seattle, Washington, attended law school at the University of Washington, and became a lawyer. He worked for about 4 years as a half-time as a public defender and half-time research faculty in U.W.’s psychology department. He published research on how to improve jurors’ understanding of jury instructions.
While living in Seattle, Larry served on the Board of Directors of Community Psychiatric Clinic, a lead community mental health agency, engaging in strategies to meet community mental health needs. He attended Holy Cross Lutheran Church, in Bellevue, Washington, served as its Council President, and participated in church efforts to support to Tent Cities in the area.
Larry is married, with two step-children and 4 grandchildren. He and his wife have had a home in Santa Barbara since 1993. Larry has lived full-time in Santa Barbara since 2016. Here, he is a member of Trinity Lutheran Church, https:\\telcsb.org, and is a combo musician at Sunday worship services. He has participated with Social Venture Partners and New Beginnings Counseling Center to advance affordable housing. As co-Chair of CLUE-SB’s Criminal Justice workgroup, he is a vocal advocate for transformational changes to Santa Barbara County’s criminal justice system.
Larry values multi-cultural perspectives. He has traveled in Europe, Asia, Africa, South and Central America, and Antarctica. In his leisure, he enjoys rock climbing, playing guitar, and photography.
R. Lane Clark is a member of the Ministry and Care team of the Santa Barbara Religious Society of Friends, (Quakers), also taking active roles in its Peace, Earth care, and Social Concerns Committee, Truth in Recruitment, and the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP). Clark earned his Masters of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993, and works as an artist and teacher in painting, documentary video, clay, and garden design. He has lived and worked in Ghana and Switzerland, maintaining active relationships with people in both places. He treasures learning from various forms of cooperative governance, and from different religious traditions. Cross cultural exchange, human rights, and justice are recurring issues in Clark’s varied endeavors. Through a variety of artistic mediums, he hopes to help people access their empathy and imagination, and to deepen their spiritual and physical well-being.
Clark is currently serving as president of the Board of CLUE-Santa Barbara.
Wayne Martin Mellinger came to Santa Barbara to do graduate work in Sociology at UC-Santa Barbara and received his Ph.D in 1990. His areas of concentration include critical social theories, qualitative research methodologies and social psychology / micro-sociology. He subsequently taught at the Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Berkeley campuses of the University of California, the Fielding Graduate University, Ventura College and Antioch University Santa Barbara. He has long been interested in power, inequality, oppression and domination and is an outspoken social justice activist for numerous causes. Passionate about critical pedagogy, Wayne envisions classrooms as sites of liberation in which oppression can be unlearned and all can become “allies” in the struggles for social justice. A psychological breakdown in 1999 left him psychotic, addicted and living on the streets. Through these events Wayne discovered that he has bipolar disorder. Subsequently he worked as a social worker helping those with mental illness transition off the streets. He has worked for WillBridge of Santa Barbara, the Safe Parking Program, New Beginnings Counseling Center, Casa Esperanza (now PATH) and Transition House (where he managed their program on Homelessness Prevention). This journey has allowed him to bear witness to innumerable social injustices, and lead him to become involved in mental health and homeless policy issues. Wayne is committed to empowering those who are marginalized, displaced and silenced to have a voice in policy decisions at the community level. To those ends, he is active in community affairs and sits on the boards of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE SB), the County’s Behavioral Wellness Commission, the County’s Continuum of Care (housing policy for our unhoused neighbors) as well as the boards of Showers of Blessings, the Committee for Social Justice. He was greatly honored to join Social Venture Partners-Santa Barbara—a local think tank prominent on matters of housing and homelessness. Wayne has been a member of the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara since 2005. He has been exploring the intersections of science and religion in a series of essays on Religious Naturalism which he hopes to turn into a book, tentatively titled The New Religion of Nature: Re-Imagining Religion During the Anthropocene. He blogs about Nature Religions at thedionysiannaturalist.blogspot.com.
Rich is a retired UCSB Professor (officially retired in July 2014, after 42 years), where he shared the MacArthur Foundation Chair with Nelson Lichtenstein, where their research focused on workers’ rights throughout global supply chains – a focus that reflects his lifelong work and passion for social justice. At UCSB, he co-founded the Global & International Studies Program, and ran the two-year MA program, which sent students abroad for 6 months to work with NGOs and other organizations concerned with social justice, sustainability, and other good things! He also has been a part-time faculty member at Fielding Graduate University for many years, where he chairs the PhD concentration in Sustainability Leadership.
In Santa Barbara, he is involved with a number of organizations and projects that should be relevant to CLUE. He is a member of Congregation B’Nai Brith (CBB), and hopes to coordinate CLUE activities with CBB. He works on human trafficking issues with SB ACT, and in the past one homelessness with Social Venture Partners. He is on the Boards of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the Fund for Refugee Initiatives/Chad Relief Foundation, and the Santa Barbara Gray Panthers. He is also the UCSB Faculty Lead for the UC-wide Disaster Resilience Network, which brings faculty, students, and community leaders together to address disaster related issues.
Gene moved from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Santa Barbara in 2012. Gene brings many strengths to our work. He is an active member of the Community Covenant Church of Goleta and is a spiritual activist, passionate about social justice issues, especially the lack of affordable housing and homelessness in Southern Santa Barbara County.
Gene is using his experiences in organization and management, as a real estate broker, remodeling and construction contractor and entertainment agency owner, to contribute to the goals and mission of CLUE. He is fighting to solve the problems of persons experiencing poverty. He is editor of the CLUE website. Furthermore, he also performs in the church band on bass guitar.
He created Helping Those in Need – Southern Santa Barbara County in 2019, in order to find other advocates for social and economic justice. This group has grown to more than 23,000 persons from Southern Santa Barbara County. The site contains extensive information regarding the affordable housing shortage, homelessness, and many of the advocates and organizations fighting for social and economic justice. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/HTiN.USA/
Gene’s wife, Pat, is also an advocate for the poor and uses her registered nurse education and experience to help others.
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