Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
Thomas Gumbleton Tuesday: The controversial retired bishop/peacenik will be Holy Week speaker at St. Rose of Lima parish, 244 West Main Street, Northborough, Massachusetts, April 11 at 7pm.
Holy cow, this is great: MIT steals Fleming’s cannon. I guess this was meant as a prank against Caltech, but it feels more like a prank against Fleming. Which makes me smile even wider.
Continue reading “Items”
On March 7, the Worcester City Manager’s office released a report that called for a five-year plan to end homelessness.
It doesn’t inspire much confidence.
The report’s second sentence admits that it comes out of the same process that brought us the city’s anti-panhandling plan. Almost none of that plan was implemented. The parts that were implemented were failures.
Should we expect anything different from the anti-homelessness plan?
In any case, five years is far too long. If the city wants to be in the business of ending homelessness, what is needed is a focused one-year plan with clear priorities. The City Manager’s report is scattered, reads like a laundry list of concerns, and avoids making tough choices about what really matters.
It is unfortunate that city government has no credibility and no sense of urgency on homelessness. Homelessness hurts all of us, and we each have a role to play in ending it.
Continue reading “No credibility, no urgency”
I think this means divestment is working!
On the divestsudan Yahoo Group, Ben Elberger wrote:
I think we hit a nerve:
[Sudanese press release against divestment]
Emily Gayong Setton wrote:
yes, indeed. actually, i think we have CNN international to thank, because they interviewed this same guy when doing the divestment story a few weeks ago. i hope you guys had a chance to see it, they cut straight from this guy from the sudanese mission saying “what we need is investment not divestment” to joseph stiglitz saying “all of the oil profits are going straight to the military and not to the people.” it was priceless.
Got in a little trouble at the county seat
Lord they put me in the jailhouse, for loafing on the street
When the judge heard the verdict, I was a guilty man
He said forty-five dollars, or thirty days in the canSaid that’ll be cash on the barrelhead, son
You can take your choice if you’re twenty-one
No money down, no credit plan
No time to chase you, ’cause I’m a busy man
— “Cash on the Barrelhead,” Ira and Charlie Louvin
Why get arrested over the Darfur genocide?
Last week, nine of us took a couple days off work, protested the Darfur genocide at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington DC, blocked the entrance, got arrested, paid $50, and went home.
None of my friends asked me “Why?”, but my fellow protesters were asked this by their friends.
Here’s my answer: because the Sudanese government bought a $1 million ad last month in the New York Times. (PDF of ad, via Jeroen.)
Continue reading “Cash on the barrelhead”
Television: A few dozen people gathered outside the WCCA TV13 studios downtown this morning to watch Worcester’s first cablecast of Democracy Now on the TV in the window. It was pretty fun. Not surprisingly, there was an interview with Noam Chomsky.
Mark Dixon speaks: The Wal*Mart king clarifies some of the details around his 49 hours at Wal-Mart.
Holy Cross: Some Holy Cross students made a monument to American and Iraqi war dead. Of course, it was vandalized. Taryn Plumb:
Perpetrators pulled or kicked the green stakes from the ground and chucked them around the surrounding area. Signs signifying what the stakes represented were torn up and replaced with an American flag and a sign reading, “Freedom is not free.”
Worcester County college students: If you need 2,000 crosses for a war dead memorial, contact me at pieandcoffee@gmail.com.
Continue reading “Democracy Now! and other items”
Editor’s note: The following was printed as an op-ed in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. It didn’t appear on their website when originally printed, possibly because they were redesigning the site. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission and is copyright 2006 Ronal Madnick.
In 2000, the City Manager created the Commission on Homelessness with a dual charge to improve services and housing for the homeless and to relocate the PIP Shelter. In August of 2000 the Commission issued its five year plan titled “Housing the Single Adult Homeless: the Worcester Plan. ”
On June 23, 2004 a plan to end chronic homelessness in Worcester developed by the Committee to End Chronic Homelessness in 10 Years was adopted by the City Manager’s Commission on Homelessness.
The Minority Report, developed by the City Manager’s Commission on Homelessness, June 19, 2004 points out that chronically homeless persons must be assisted but also points out that others who also need assistance must be considered. “Individuals who are living with friends or relatives in overcrowded conditions , prisoners who are released to the street, foster children who reach the age of 18 when they are no longer eligible for foster care, the battered spouse who leaves an abusive home, the indivudal who is laid off/fired from employment and can no longer afford housing, the tenant at will who loses housing because the building was sold, the tenant at will whose rent increase forces them to the street” must also be considered.
In 2006 the City Manager announced a goal to end homelessness within five years. The Manager is clearly moving in the right direction but five years is too long. There is no reason why the city cannot carry out a program within a year or two.
Enough studies. Let’s get to work.
Continue reading “Worcester’s Homeless Plan”
Joe Zarrella, Catholic Worker pioneer, has gone home to God. Deo Gratias, as Dorothy Day would say. I first met Joe when I interviewed him for Voices from the Catholic Worker. The penetrating questions he asked me after the interview helped to seal my fate as a Catholic Worker. We became friends and I will never, ever forget him.
Continue reading “Memories of Joseph Zarrella”
Here’s an interesting article in the New Yorker about relative vs. absolute poverty. A number of people, self included, have pointed out that many poor people in America routinely own items once considered luxuries or are in some other ways better off than poor people, or even, to a certain extent, the middle class were a generation ago. The article takes this as a starting point but then makes the argument that relative poverty, not absolute poverty, is what actually counts, and that relative poverty has real effects. In other words, just because poor people are likely to own TVs now doesn’t mean that poverty isn’t still a bad thing. (Another way of looking at that would be to say that owning a TV or a dishwasher doesn’t really matter much when discussing “poverty” as a concept.)
The article doesn’t really go much into what sort of nutrition the poor in America are getting now vs. a generation ago, and it would be worth examining ways in which the poor might be worse off even in absolute terms than in years past.
And of course, we’re speaking of “the poor” as one large group that might include everyone from the absolutely destitute to those who might be better off but not exactly comfortable. Disaggregating the stories could make a more vivid picture of the situation.
A busy day: While I was in jail, Pie and Coffee was Boing Boinged.
Continue reading “Items”
Nine people were arrested in a protest against the Darfur genocide yesterday at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC.
Yesterday morning, several dozen people gathered at the statue of Gandhi at the nearby Indian Embassy, holding signs depicting the victims and survivors of the ethnic violence in Darfur.
They marched to the Sudanese Embassy, where they handed out leaflets to passersby. Several demonstrators spoke, including Holocaust survivor Helen Goldkind. Mrs. Goldkind said:
My name is Helen Goldkind. I am a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. The reason why I came here today is because when I was a little girl nobody spoke out for us. I want to speak up for others. Nobody should have to be punished or killed because they’re of any color or religion. Please, the world should hear us now. There was nothing done fifty, sixty years ago when Hitler did to the Jews what they [motions towards Sudanese embassy] are doing now.
Then three demonstrators stood blocking the bottom of the stairs. A uniformed Secret Service agent warned them that by blocking the stairs, they were breaking the law. Demonstrator Brenna Cussen invited him to join them on the stairs, and he replied, “I don’t wanna get arrested! I respect what y’all are doing. If I get arrested, I’ll lose my clearance.”
After two more warnings, the three were arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly. Six more demonstrators came forward to block the stairs, and they, too, were arrested.
The demonstrators had warned the Secret Service about the civil disobedience beforehand, and representatives of the two groups had informally discussed how things would play out. Plasticuffed in the police van, Ms. Cussen commented on the gentleness with which the police treated the demonstrators. “It feels weird. I guess it’s good. It takes the ego out of it. This is about making a statement about Darfur, not being heroes.”
Those arrested were Brenna Cussen, of the Catholic Worker in South Bend, Indiana; Al Guilmette, of Leominster, Massachusetts; David Maher, of West Brookfield, Massachusetts; Mike Benedetti, Ken Hannaford-Ricardi, and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy of Saints Francis & Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, Massachusetts; and Clark University students Philip Loomis, Ryan Smith, and Lia Volat of Worcester, Massachusetts.
Several of the demonstrators were college students unable to miss more than one day of studies, so the demonstrators had decided beforehand to pay a $50 fine (without an admission of guilt) in exchange for a quick release. After a few hours in holding cells, they were free.
As the men exited the police station, one cop said to them, “You people are doing this for a good cause.”
Afterwards, Al Guilmette, a retiree from Leominster committing civil disobedience for the first time, said it was “quite an experience.” When asked if he’d recommend it to others, he said, “For this cause, yes.”
Continue reading “Nine arrested, released in Darfur protest”